


A new start

by Sleepingalong



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-01-03
Packaged: 2019-10-03 19:19:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 16
Words: 26,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17289866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sleepingalong/pseuds/Sleepingalong
Summary: This work is under major reconstructions.





	1. The edge

"I got it!" I shout, running over the wet field, to the ball. Its only two meters away from me when I get tackled from behind by Jack. "No, you're not! See you later, pig," he grins evilly, making sure to kick my leg before getting to the ball and scoring the goal I easily could've made. I bite away a groan and stand up, almost falling down again as one of Jacks mates bumps into me on purpose. "Watch it, fag," he sneers. The referee blows his whistle only a few seconds after, signaling the end of the game. I stumble off of the field, receiving hateful glares from most of the team and even some of the crowd. "Way to go, Ryder," coach jeered, shoving me to the side. "Move that fat ass of yours!" he tells me, before going over to Jack and congratulating him with the last goal. I hobble to the locker room to get my bag before the others come in. I'll shower at home, I don't want them to see me like this.  
"Wow dude, are you okay? Jack kicked you pretty hard." My friend Jordan appears on my right side. I eye him cautiously. His dark curls that bounce with every step he takes fall over his gray eyes, almost covering the concerned look in them. "Yeah, I'm fine. It looked way worse than it was, really."

"You sure? I can-" Jordan starts, but is cut off when Jeremy slings his arm around my shoulder and laughs. "Leave him be, little brother, if he says he's fine, he's fine." I shoot him a thankful look which he returns with a wink. "Come on, let's go to Mario’s. Natasha gave me money so I'm paying!" Jeremy says excitedly. Natasha is their mom, a lovely woman with wild red curls. Neither boys had inherited her looks, both taking after their eccentric father. Jeremy smirks, “I’m thinking a strawberry mango smoothie, how about you?”. My stomach churns at the thought of smoothies and makes some weird noise, making my friends laugh. "Sounds like you need more than just a smoothie!" Jordan grins, while Jeremy eyes me worriedly before grinning too and pulling me towards our mini-van. I grimace and look away, watching the opposite team leave in their touring bus. A figure leaning against the side of the greasy bus catches my attention for a moment when he lights his cigarette and looks up, locking eyes with me for a few seconds. His cat-like eyes stare right into my soul and I feel something weird, but at the same time my mind settles down and my stomach goes back to its normal ways. A small smile makes its way onto the face of the young man and then he's gone. For a few moments I stare at the now empty spot, where the boy had been. “C, you there, man?" Fingers snap in front of my face and I swat them away, blinking a few times. "Dude where were you?" Jordan asks me, sounding annoyed, "Come on, let's go."

Half an hour later we're at our usual spot in Mario’s. The young man hasn't left my thoughts for that whole time and even now I still can't get him out of my head. His eyes were so intense and his dark brown hair was so-. "C, will you stop zoning out for a moment and just tell Maddie what you want? Honestly, what's wrong with you today?" I look up to see Nick look at me, a bit annoyed. I smile apologetically and shrug. "Sorry, just distracted I guess. Just get me a blueberry smoothie, Maddie," I tell Maddie, the waitress, before looking down at my trembling hands in my lap, they're still dirty from the game, even have some blood on them. Disgusting. I'm disgusting.  
I stand up. "I'm going to freshen up a bit," I say, pointing to the bathroom at the back. Jordan nods and I start to walk away. "I'll come with you," his voice sounds next to me. I groan. "You don't have to, Jo."  
"Actually, I do, I gotta piss," he tells me grinning. I look at my best friend and sigh. "You're annoying," I tell him when we enter the empty bathroom. "Whatever you say mate, now spill. What's up with you?"   
I shake my head. "Nothing." Everything. I'm a fat, ugly fag.  
"Are you lying to me? Oh my god, you're lying to your best friend!" Jordan looks at me with big, sad eyes. "I understand that you'd lie to Jeremy, but to me? Dude, we're like brothers!" I grimace and look away, that's true, Jordan and me are like brothers. We used to tell each other everything – Jordan even told me that he regretted losing his virginity to Daphne, his third girlfriend. Since the bathroom is still empty I pull off my hoodie right there. Jonas was the only one I was comfortable changing in front of. "I'm sorry, Jo." I mumble, my back towards him. I close my eyes and pull of my dirty shirt, grabbing a clean one quickly. Jonas stops my actions when he hugs me tightly. "You can tell me things, C," he mumbles against my skin. I feel his slight stubble against my back and I freeze. I suddenly can't breath and I feel like a hand closes over my throat. I close my eyes, trying to fight the memories.

I can feel the stubble on his chin against my skin when his teeth scrape over my back with too much force. I next hear a bag being opened and then the clicking of a pen. Next I feel is a sharp pain when one of them writes something on my back while pressing the thing too far into my skin.

"C? Chris, what's wrong?" Jonas asks me alarmed. He grip on me loosens and he turns me around.

His friends are laughing while they hold my arms. They turn me around and push me up against the wall and I wince when my head hits the wall, hard. A hand closes over my throat and squeezes tightly. "This is a warning, Ryder. Next time your fat ass is in the way, we'll do way worse," Nero breaths in my ear before letting me go and leaving the room, while his buddies kick me a few more times before throwing me to the ground and leaving me for dirt. I gasp for air and try to blink the black spots away, but I lose my focus and everything slowly turns into a hazy mess.

"Christian Jayden Ryder, snap out of it!" Natasha's voice brings me back to the bathroom in Mario’s. I blink a few times and sit upright, panting. "Dammit boy, you almost gave me a heart attack," Natasha sighs before pulling me in a hug. It takes me a while before I can breathe right and register what's happened. "Chris?" When did she get here? "Do you know what happened?". I nod my head. It takes me a moment to get my voice working again but then I can finally tell them what happened. "I just remembered something," I tell them shakily. "Something from a few years back. Nero."

By the murderous looks on their faces, I can tell that they understand what I’m talking about. The Jamison family knew about Nero, who had been my high school tormentor. He still haunted my dreams, although I now had someone else to worry about. Natasha hugs me a bit tighter before letting go of me and standing up. "I brought you some clean clothes. Freshen up a bit and come drink a smoothie with us when you're ready," she says, offering me a smile before exiting the bathroom, leaving me alone with Jordan. He looks at me with worry-filled eyes. "I'm sorry!" he says as soon as the door closes behind his mother's back. I shake my head and take a step towards him. "It's not your fault," I say, hugging him close and breathing in his familiar scent. It's my own fault for being so weak. It's always my fault. I'm a stupid fag.

I think we spend half an hour more in the bathroom before we go and join Jeremy and Natasha again. An ice cold blueberry smoothie is placed on the table with a chocolate cookie next to it. Sipping from my smoothie I debate whether to eat the cookie or not, since it has at least 500 calories in it. The golden brown, round cookie, with three kinds of chocolate mixed in it. It used to be my favorite. No, I can't have it. I'll get even fatter if I eat that. After some more sips, I gulp down the rest of my smoothie. On my right side Jeremy snorts at something at his phone, so I lean over laying my head on his shoulder so I can read along. He’s scrolling through some social media app, where Jack has posted pictures of the team in the locker room, celebrating their victory. “It was a good game,” he tells me. I roll my eyes at him. “Yeah, for them.”  
“Oh come on, you had some really great goals too,” Jeremy exclaims. I poke him in his side, but don’t say anything. My eyes roam off to the chocolate cookie that just seems to be screaming my name.   
"C, would you stop staring at the cookie and start eating it before I do?" Jordan interrupts my thoughts. I shove the cookie to him and stand up, "You eat it, I'm not hungry. I'm going to get some air." With those words I walk out of the small smoothie shop, leaving three baffled people behind.  
Once outside I lean against the wall, sighing in relief when I notice that no one has followed me. For a minute I close my eyes, enjoying the silence. Until my stomach rumbles. It’s a feeling I have come accustomed to in the past few months.   
I open my eyes when I get the feeling that someone is looking at me, and for just a moment, I see two young men staring at me, but a second later they’re gone. I’m going crazy.


	2. Lost

I keep staring at the screen of my laptop, hoping that somehow words will appear on their own. When that’s not the case I sigh and take another sip of my cappuccino, frowning at the cursed piece of electronics. “Mario, can I get one of yogurts you had last week?” I ask the owner of the café. He thinks for a bit and then grins broadly. “For you always, my dear friend. Do you want an extra jar to take home later today?”  
I shake my head in response. No, they’d take them from me. “No, thank you, Mario. I appreciate the offer, though,” I smile at the big man, and he sticks up his thumbs. “Only for you, my dear friend.”

I take another look at the pile of paper on my left and then back at my laptop, cursing my teacher for assigning us five new chapters for next week. You can’t rush creativity and you also can’t just force it out of your fingers. Well, according to Mr. Jamison you can. I close my eyes and concentrate, diving deep down into my mind. It’s a technique my favorite English teacher taught me when I was younger. 

I start typing words. Random words, hoping that they would somehow form a flowing story or at least some sort of guideline for my new story. My fingers keep flying over the keyboard. “Come on, come ooon…” With a slight sparkle of hope, I focus on my screen again and see a page filled with words. Difficult words. Words I learned in physics and biology years ago. Words that I crammed in my brain, trying to remember them for finals. But those are not the words I need right now. I groan. “Fuck me.”  
“Gladly.” I turn around to see Jordan. “Seriously?” I glare at my best friend, who’s laughing at me, a jar of yogurt and a bunch of small chocolates on a plate in his hands. He smiles and sits down next to me. “Still working on that story for my dad?”  
“You know it. I can’t seem to find words. I mean, look at this mess,” I gesture at the screen filled with words like ‘photosynthesis’ and ‘heterozygous’. The tall guy next to me laughs, “Maybe it’s a sign?” Scoffing I try to refrain myself from punching him. “What, for me to quit the course? Yeah, great idea, Cookie.”  
“No silly, to look at it from a different perspective.”  
"What do you mean?" sighing I turn away from my screen. Jordan had been my best friend since we were very young. I spent a lot a lot of time at his house, playing with his two hamsters and learning how to make cookies. Jordan’s father was the one to teach us how to read and write. He sometimes even helped us with maths, despite despising the subject.  
“I mean that you should go to other places to write. You always go here, so when your mind doesn’t work it’s telling you that you need to go look for inspiration. Right now it’s even dropping you clues: you need to go to the biology section of the library,” my dark skinned friend tells me, looking smug. If any other person had told me that, I would smack them and tell them not to say such crazy things, but I know my best friend and I know that he’s right. “Sure. Lead the way. I just want to finish this stupid assignment,” I mutter, closing my notebook and laptop, putting them in my back before piling up all the paper that was spread all over the table. What was it about this guy anyway? He could make me do anything. But he doesn’t because he’s too nice.

In silence we walk towards the library, which is only a block away. A cold wind tugs on my beanie, almost taking it with it, but I’ve gotten used to the mischievous winds around here. The ground crunches beneath our feet, leaves try to hold on to their branches for just a while longer, somewhere behind us a dog barks as the children play in the puddles. I take a sideways glance at my best friend, whose bright pink raincoat sticks out like a sore thumb. A smile finds its way on my face, remembering when we bought it. Or - more specifically - why.  
“Stop thinking about that damn coat, fairy boy. My dad still laughs at me when I go out in this thing,” he says it like he’s annoyed, but then he flashed me a grin, “It’s still comfy though.”

We merrily walk into the library, still laughing like we’re two silly teenage girls. Ms. Evermory smiles at us when we wave at her. I think she has a small crush on Jordan. My suspicions only grow when she blushes, and I realize that Jordan was winking at her. I raise my elbow a bit, wanting to hit him in the side, but he moves out of the way, laughing. Ms. Evermory shakes her head and then continues to slam on her keyboard. That computer has always been shit. I start walking around, looking at books while Jordan offers her to help her with whatever she is working on.  
“But first,” he says, “I have to help my little friend here find his way.”

Jordan guides me to where he thinks I should be. Using my scarf as a blindfold and a leash, he guides me to the upper levels of the library, through rows of bookshelves, until we finally stop. My best friends chuckles and then walks away, leaving me to stand there with my scarf wrapped around my head. I hear someone flicking through a book right in front of me, but the person doesn’t address me, so I just ignore them for a moment. The woolen fabric that covers my face starts to itch, so after a deep breath, I pull it off. Above my head, there’s a sign that reads “Biology”. Big shocker. I did think that Jordan was going to trick me, maybe take me to some weird section in the library, but then again, he is just too nice.  
I used to come here a lot when I was younger, intrigued by the books with the most beautiful pictures and the horribly difficult words. Now, I spend most of my days reading other fantasy novels, trying to learn the writers’ writing techniques, looking for ways I could make my characters more human (or alien). With a small sigh, I run my hand over the covers of the heavy books. The older ones, the ones still bound in leather, leave a tingly feeling in my fingertips. I smile, thinking about the first time I held such a book.

“You have to be really careful with it, Christian. Can you do that for me?” Mrs. Jackson looked at me with her big doe-eyes. I nodded vigorously, I really wanted to touch it. The book was calling my name, so it seemed. It was old, I could see all the wrinkles and rips in the leather and the golden letters had lost their colour in some places. The book was full of old tales. Tales about fairies and spirits, telling me that there were so many wonders in the world.   
The others told me that I was silly, that the stories were all made-up. But I never believed them. 

I think I never really stopped believing in the tales. Never stopped believing in the magic that the books hold. Smiling I look up to the stranger, who has his face buried in a book that looks like an old diary. I walk up to him. “What is it you’re reading?”   
The stranger looks up, his eyes widened. I’d say he looks startled, but it’s more than that. There are more than a few emotions crossing the man’s face: fear, surprise, happiness, anger, shock… His eyes tell a whole story, but it’s not giving me the right words. It takes him a moment, but then the man looks at the book and then back at me. “It’s a.. it is a journal. On… plants. One might say it is a book of fiction, but there are so many things you don’t see,” the man speaks like he’s tasting every word he says, slow, pronouncing every word carefully, like he’s not from around here.   
Yet he seems familiar.

I spend the rest of the day at the biology section of the library, smiling at the memories that come back to me with every cover I touch. Sometimes they’re daydreams I used to have when I was still living in the orphanage. Sometimes they were flashbacks to the times that I lived with a small family somewhere up a hill. I didn’t stay there long enough to remember exactly where I was. A few memories felt old, but I don’t know where those came from. They seemed important to remember, so those I wrote down.   
The stranger has moved to the reading tables on the “balcony”, progressing rather slowly. Maybe because there is a lot of difficult facts in it. Maybe because it isn’t written in English. Or maybe he really isn’t from around here. I shrug it off, focusing on my notebook, in which I’m scribbling away. I can’t seem to shake off the little smile on my face as pages after page gets filled. Man, I really missed this. 

“Christian?” a shrill voice behind makes me jump up. “Melinda, you scared the crap out of me, what the… What are you doing here?” I eye my sister, who looks very out of place surrounded by books. She smacks on here gum, looking very annoyed to be here. “Mom sent me, since your punk ass didn’t pick up your stupid phone. They got you one for a reason, ya know?”   
Sighing I take my phone from my pocket, seeing nine missed calls from “home” and twenty-one texts asking where I am. A few texts from Jordan and Jeremy too, but I’ll answer those later. It’s only after swiping all the notifications away that the time appears in big digits. Oh damn. It’s well past nine, meaning I did not only miss dinner, but I also missed the curfew. Again. My stomach turns at the thought of what mother will do. Slightly shaken I look at the black-haired girl in front of me and then back at my phone. “Yep, you’re screwed, dearest brother,” she sneers. With that, she turns around and walks back down, towards the exit.   
I think I must have looked a little lost, because the stranger looks at me with some kind of weird look between sadness and pity. He seems to think for a while before looking up at me. “Are you in trouble?”   
I shake my head and then nod. Who am I kidding? I’m totally going to be banned from the library again. “Well, yes. I missed dinner and the curfew, so I will probably be grounded from going to the library and seeing my friends again,” I sigh. The stranger nods, a sad look has now completely taken over his face. “I’m very sorry to hear that.”   
“It’s no big deal, but I do have to head home now. Have a nice night, sir,” I smile and wave at the man before grabbing my notebook and heading out myself.


	3. Blue

When I got home that evening, I was sent to bed immediately. Sid, my blue haired husky, was waiting for me there, happily panting. “Hey boy, were you waiting for me?” I coo to the five-years-old dog. Barking, he jumped from the bed and into my arms. Now, I was lucky that I was accustomed to my dogs weird habits, otherwise I surely would have fallen over. I open my window and help the big husky onto the balcony so he can get some fresh air. 

The next morning, mother had told me I wouldn’t be punished this time because she understood the importance of homework. But there was no breakfast or lunch for me. Nor was there dinner that evening. The same happened the following two days. At least I can’t get fat this way.   
Spending all that time at the library that day did help me a lot, It left me filled with inspiration. I was too busy with writing that I forgot about eating in general. In just over three days I had not written five chapters, but seven. Mr. Jamison seemed very glad to see that I was the first one to hand in the assignment, as always. He had winked at me, murmuring something about how glad he was that the library trick worked. I think I need to talk to Jordan about that. 

Since I handed in my assignment two days early, I don’t have to attend the work group today. That leaves me wandering around the city with Sid. He had belonged to Old Mrs. Hampton, who lived on the edge of town. I always waved at her when I made my escape to the mountains or the forest. When she had just gotten Sid, she had called me inside and let me play with him. When he had gotten a bit older, she’d let me take him for hikes. Since then I had not only made a new friend, I also found a place I could spend some time if I needed to escape my adoptive family.   
That was when the Jamisons had moved away to the other side of the ocean for two years. Mr. Jamison had gotten the chance to work as a lecturer at a very famous university and Natasha had been able to land herself a job as a trauma surgeon fairly easy. 

I smile at Sid, the dog still recognized the small wooden house he had lived his first year in. I guess a year is a long time for a dog, seeing that they only live for approximately twelve years. They spend their whole lives around humans that barely seem to get older. 

My overexcited dog seems to dance over the path, then he stops to see if I’m still following him and then moves on, further into town. The minister of the church smiles and waves at me, looking a small bit like a penguin. Just to be polite I wave back before continuing my way.   
The town isn’t all that big, but the illogical placing of the buildings makes it a bit of a maze where you can spend hours in. I used to hate this town when I just got here, but the more time I spent here, the more I started to love it. Now, I like the weirdness of the town, its twists and dead ends, its character, even its judgmental residents. 

Half an hour later, we walk past the graveyard and I stop. My eyes search out Mrs. Hamptons tombstone and a flash of pain seems to tear through my heart when I hear Sid whine. Mrs. Hampton had officially given Sid to me when she went to the hospital to be treated for her bad leg. I guess she already knew she wasn’t going to make it out again.   
At first, mother wouldn’t let me keep him, but she eventually fell for his big trusting eyes. Sid was mostly attached to my side, but he also had a liking for my father, who’s rarely home but loved to play catch with him. The only person in the household who didn’t fall for his charm was my darling sister, Melinda. Big surprise.

Sid and I went on a lot of walks, hiking through the woods and hills that surround the small town we live in. He even climbed a mountain with me when he was still a puppy. That was when Mrs. Hampton still owned him. She always told me to take him up there, that he’d love it. So I did. And he did love it. He stayed next to me the whole time, and when there was a part too steep, or when there was a part that had to be climbed, I carried him. And we reached the top. Together. 

He also loved it when I went back to the orphanage, to see one of my favorite caretakers. I took Sid with me, to cheer up the kids, and he behaved really well the whole day. The children loved him. Even Mr. James, with all his seriousness, loved him.   
Sid and I did that a lot after that first visit. Visiting orphanages, cheering people up. I even taught him how to act dead and to do a high-five. That’s how I earned money for my first car. An old Chevy, but it worked just fine. Our first trip with that car was to the beach, where we-

Sid barking and pulling on the leash brings me back to the here and now. He normally doesn’t bark. Or pull. “What is it, bud? Sid! Hey boy, don’t- Sid, what’s wrong?” I try to calm him, but he keeps barking and growling, biting me even. “Sid! Sid Wha- Sid? Sid, boy look at me.” I grab his head, almost like you’d do with a child. “Look at me, bud. Look-” He starts to calm down. Lies down even. The light in his eyes dim. “Sid no! Sid… No. No. No...”   
I sit there, on the ground in the middle of the street, with Sid’s head in my lap. “Sid…” I hear my own voice break as all the life slowly leaves his eyes. I keep on repeating his name, as if that would bring him back. Then I feel a hand on my shoulder, causing me to look up. Around me a group of people had formed, whispering, gossiping. “Son, are you alright?” a deep and dark voice asks me. I nod numbly and then look up at the elderly man who is crouched next to me. “I… he just… He’s only five, he wasn’t supposed to…” I try to tell the man what happened, but he shushes me and tells me that it’s alright. “I called the vet already, she’s on her way. I’m going to stay here with you, alright?”   
Nodding again, I try to thank the man, but he shakes his head. “Everyone would have done this,” he says. But he’s wrong, though. Because no one else did. 

***

A few days later I walk into Mario’s, my head still a bit numb, but ready to start writing again. Mario is the first to notice me. He tries to clean the flower off of his hands before walking over and giving me a big hug. I’m glad he knows me well enough not to say anything when he releases me and walks back to the counter. He takes a big mug and starts to make me a big mug of green tea. Through the double doors, I see Jordan taking a freshly baked batch of brownie-cakes out of the oven, while talking to his brother animatedly. When he spots me his face turns sad for a moment, but then it lights up again.   
He grabs a box and forcefully thrusts it into Mario’s hands, pointing at me before grinning widely and focusing on his brownie-cakes. I take my seat by the window, surprised that it isn’t taken already. I take out my laptop and notebook, some pens, and a big binder, organizing it all on the table in front of me. I am so ready to finish this manuscript way before the deadline on July 30th.   
When Mario brings me my drink and the box, I have fully settled into my seat and just started up my e-mail. “Jordan wanted me to give you this,” the man shrugs, looking a bit lost. “He felt really bad, the past few days. Said he knew you didn’t want to be bothered, but still wanted to do something for you.”   
I smile at the older man in front of me. “It’s alright, Mario. I just needed some time. It’s not every day that your dog-” just falls down on the ground, dead. I swallow thickly. I hadn’t meant to say it like that. “I mean, nobody expected Sid to die. He was just five.” Mario nods, sniffing. “You are right. We didn’t expect him to pass away at this age. We all loved him,” he points at my chest, “Just so you know, he’s in there. And he still runs next to you.” Nodding I smile, because it seems that way. But because you can’t say “You know, I think he’s still next to me, somehow,” I just tell him that that’s a lovely thought. Because it is. 

Coming home that evening isn’t all that bad. My father – adoptive father – also just got home, and he smiles and pats me on the back. He then turns away, putting away his coat, turns around and pulls me in for a hug. “It’s alright, kiddo. I’ll miss him too,” he whispers in my ear before straightening up and stepping into the dining room. I stand there, a bit stunned, before shooting into action. I walk to my room, though a bit more fast paced than I’d do normally. I open the window and take the box from the balcony, hiding it in the tiny space beneath my bed.  
“Chris, what are you doing upstairs? Come eat dinner,” mother calls me from down the stairs. Her high-pitched voice cracks a few times, but that’s kind of normal in her case. I sigh, wash my hands in my bathroom and head for the dining room, where everyone is sitting already. “Come, sit down, darling. I made you some eggs. Many proteins, you know?” she smiles at me sweetly, her yellowish teeth visible. I nod and pretend to smile as my stomach grumbles when I smell the chicken breast that’s on everyone else’s plates, alongside a pile of fries, and fresh lettuce and tomatoes. I look at my plate with scrambled egg-whites and a lone slice of tomato, grabbing my fork and stabbing a piece of egg on it. “Enjoy, sweethearts,” mother sings. Yeah, thanks, you too. The egg tastes bitter, but maybe that’s because of my thoughts. Probably. Or her cooking just really sucks. Oh wait, it does.


	4. Rebellion

The following two weeks are a roller coaster. Along with Mr. Jamison’s classes I had started to attend some extra credit classes so I would be away from home a lot more. I was glad to not be holed up in that house anymore, but it also meant more work.   
Walking into Mario’s was like a breath of fresh air. Mario is walking around, shouting orders to the back while also keeping up his happy appearance. For some reason, my spot at the window isn’t taken – again. I have a hunch that Mario keeps spaces free for his regulars, but every time I try to bring that up, he just smiles mischievously and winks. As if that answers my question. Sometimes I wonder if that man is even capable of giving a straight answer. 

Suddenly very tired, I drop down into my seat. I had been at the school since early this morning, finishing up on a project with one of my classmates. At one point, she was ready to bash in my head with a book, and I must confess, the feeling was mutual. But we finished it, forced Mr. Jamison to proofread it, and then handed it in. By the time classes ended and new assignments were handed out, it was well past seven.   
Since my dear mother dropped the punishments after a long discussion that went a bit like:  
“Mother, I’m twenty-three, will you stop treating me like I’m a reckless sixteen-year-old?”; “You still live under my roof, Christian!”; “Mother.”; “Christian”, I am finally allowed out until whatever time I please. Not only do I make sure to come home as late as possible as an act of rebellion, I also made a point of no longer eating dinner with them. At first, mother tried to call me, but now she simply ignores me. Melinda joined her, thinking of it as a funny game. The only one who’s acting the same is my father. Only he asked me to calm him Nick, since he wasn’t “really your father, am I right?”.   
He also gave me some “pocket money” to get by for the week. 

“Here,” says Jeremy, setting down a plate and sliding into the seat in front of me, “You look like you need it.” I smile up at my friend. “Thanks. Yeah, I feel like I’m about to keel over.”   
“You look like it, too,” the blond baker jokes and I shoot him a playful glare. “Eat,” he then orders, smiling at me. Eying the plate in front of me I see a nice stack of potato waffles and chicken nuggets, my two favorite things to eat (when made by Jeremy). I smile as I pick up my fork, loving how Jeremy still takes care of me, even though he really doesn’t have to. “Don’t go all sappy on me, mate. I know that look.”  
“Yeah, sorry,” I grin at him before taking a bite, moaning at the taste of the potatoes. I love this food. Even though it will make me fatter. Guess this is going to be my last big meal for a while. 

After dinner I hang around in the cafe, chatting with Mario and a few of the other locals. My schoolwork forgotten and a beer in my hand. It’s Friday after all. Jordan and his father joined us too half an hour ago. Mr. Jamison immediately dives into a story about what pranks a few of his student pulled today. My mood lightens up during the evening, the stress of the past few weeks lifting off my shoulders for a few hours. Mr. Jami- Danny told me that he enjoyed where my story was going and that he couldn’t wait to read more. He even gave me some pointers on how to keep the tension in the story, while not making it more dramatic.   
When it gets close to midnight, I say my goodbyes, hug Danny and Jordan goodbye, and give Jeremy a kiss on his cheek as a thank-you. Then I grab my bag and leave the cafe, walking to my cold house, which is starting to feel less and less like a home. As we’re halfway May, the sky doesn't get all too dark, leaving the sky filled with different shades of dark blue and stars. The lanterns on the side of the streets glow a warm yellowish light, making it just bright enough to see where I’m going. I think about popping in my ear buds, but the far-away cries from an owl sounds through the night makes me reconsider. 

I’m almost at my house when I see two people standing on the side of the road, looking at my house through what look like binoculars. I stand still, thinking about asking them what they think they are doing, but decide I don’t care enough for that. When I start walking again, one if the two nudges the other. “That’s him! We found him!” he hisses excitedly. My eyebrows shoot up. Are they talking about me? Shaking my head I enter the house. Probably not. I’m just a nobody.   
That night I have trouble sleeping. Thinking about it later, they looked like the two men who were standing outside Mario’s a few weeks back. It keeps me from sleeping until the moment my alarm goes off. 

I groan and roll out of bed, stumbling to my bathroom. After a quick shower, I get dressed and head out the door, with so much time to spare that I’m able to catch an earlier bus. Normally I’d listen to some music, but today I don’t feel like it. Instead I watch as we pass dozens of trees and meadows, a castle, and some farms. At one point I have the feeling that we’re in a loop, seeing the same trees, cows, and houses all over again, but as always I arrive at the school in half an hour. 

After a week I finally find myself in the library again. Instead of going for the biology section like last time, I head to the history section to look for books on the middle ages. Mr. Hunter, one of my new teachers that helps with our projects, had recommended me to look for some sort of “out of place” elements in my story. For me, that translated as historic elements in a very futuristic setting. Mr. Hunter and Mr. Jamison loved the idea, resulting in an enthusiastic brainstorming session.  
Grabbing a few books to add to the pile, I head over to my table again. It’s relatively quiet, so I can enjoy the sounds of pages turning and silent whispers. The strange man from a few weeks back walks past me and smiles as I wave at him. He nods back and then heads for the biology section again. He seems nice.

A few hours later I have a stack of neatly written papers next to me and the “read” pile is bigger than the “to read” pile. The library has cleared out and Mandy, one of the high school students who work here, has started putting books back in their rightful places. She smiles at me as she walks by, but doesn’t try to talk to me. It saves us both from uncomfortable chatter.  
Time passes quickly and by the time I close the last book, it’s past eight. My phone died a few hours ago, but I don’t mind. I don’t use the stupid thing a lot anyway. I turn off my laptop, stack up all the papers and put everything in my bag before I get up to put all the books away. It takes four trips to put them all back on the shelves and another to pick up some books that I want to take home, so when I stand outside to breathe in the fresh air, the clock tolls nine times.

“Hey look, guys, the fat nerd finally finished his bed-time story,” a taunting voice sounds from my right. A snickering answer follows, “Are you sure, I don’t see his mommy anywhere?”. Two other guys laugh. “That’s because he doesn’t have a mother, our poor nerd. She’s probably shot up in some dump.”  
I feel anger surging through my veins. I may not know who my mother was, but that doesn't give anyone the right to insult her. Before I can say anything in response, hands grab me by my arms and I’m pushed against the bricks of the building. Within a few seconds, fists find my stomach and sides. It takes me a moment to react, but then I start trashing, adrenalin pumping through my body.   
The second I feel the grip on my arms loosen I kick back and hear the pop of a knee going the wrong way. That’s the most I can do before an elbow hits my nose, knocking my head back. One of the taller guys locks his arm around my neck, cutting off most of my air supply. The leader of the group - he seems familiar but I don’t remember his name very well. What I can tell is that the other three are on the football team with me. The one on my left, Jack, takes my moment of vulnerability to kick me in the ribs. A whimper escapes me when I feel something crack inside of me, and the four men laugh. “We have a baby here, boys, it whimpers like a little girl,” the Jack sneers, making the others laugh again. Then they start landing new blows. Too tired to continue resisting, I give up and just let it happen.

I don’t know how I made it out, but eventually, I find myself in front of Mario’s. I know I feel like I was hit by a truck, though. Close, you got beat up. Instead of going in, I slide down to the ground, next to the front door. Sitting like that makes me realize how tired I actually am. 

***

I wake up with a major headache and a very sore upper body. Without opening my eyes I know I’m not at home, but I’m also not at a hospital. Thank the stars. A wooden chair next to me cracks as the person sitting on it moves and I turn my head towards the sound. I try to open my eyes, but only my left eye manages to open fully. “Mario?” I ask the blurry man. The bulky Hawaiian beams at me. “You’re awake! I was getting worried, my friend!”   
“Why?” I ask, groaning as I try to sit up a bit. A scoffing laugh sounds from the far corner of the room. “Why? Because we found a very dear friend of ours on the doorstep, beaten to a pulp,” Jeremy says, fuming. I try to smile. “I’m okay, no need to worry about me.” Jeremy snorts and throws his hands up in frustration. “No need to worry? Are you mad? You got gay bashed.”  
I scoff and shake my head, “I didn’t get gay bashed. I’m not gay, Jer.”   
“That’s not what you said when you had my di-”  
“That’s NOT a conversation for now, and it’s certainly not a conversation for when we have company,” cuts Mario his employee off, “Right now, Chris, the police is downstairs. They have a few questions for you.” 

A few questions turned out to be dozens of questions. The two women wrote every little detail down, even things I didn’t think were important. Since I could identify three of the four ambushers, they left pretty quick to make sure the guys would be brought in for questioning. The raven-haired cop told me to stay away from school for a while and to call if anyone was causing me any more trouble. I nodded obediently, but knowing myself I’d be attending classes again by Monday. Mario ushers me back to bed after he closes the door behind the two women, smiling at me with a certain kind of sadness. “What?”  
“Nothing, go to bed.”

If I’m honest, I don’t feel all too threatened by it, but Mario seems very concerned. He openly voiced his concerns before I went back to the bed in his spare room. Getting up the stairs seemed like hell with my three fractured ribs, but getting into bed was even worse. Jeremy had to help me get cleaned up and take off my clothes. While he was getting an extra pillow, I figured I’d save him a lot of effort if I just lowered myself onto the bed. That didn’t work out very well. Halfway in the air I lose my footing and fall down onto the bed with a loud yelp. Jeremy rushes to my side, frowning at me. “If you weren’t hurt, I’d totally kill you, you stubborn brat.”   
“I love you too,” I groan, covering my ribs with my right arm. A somewhat dark look appears on Jeremy’s face and I cover up mine with my remaining arm. “Don’t talk like that, Chrissy, you might not like what will happen next.” A small growl leaves his mouth and I feel myself getting a bit bold. “Maybe I like that part,” I taunt him. With that, he’s leaning over me, one hand next to my head, the other one taking a hold of my left hand. His lips softly touch mine before pulling away. “Please don’t stop.”   
A whimper escapes my mouth when he keeps hovering over me. “Go to sleep, please,” Jeremy whispers. Annoyed that I didn’t get what I wanted, I lay my head back down, my eyes still focused on his lips. “I’m sorry, but you don’t want this, babe. We stopped for a reason.” Jeremy’s soft voice tells me what I already know. But still… “I really do still love you,” I tell him. He nods. “Me too. But you know why we can’t.”  
“Yeah…” I close my eyes and lay a hand on his cheek. “Stay with me?” 

I wake up with my adoptive father next to me and Melinda hopping from one foot to the other at the foot of the bed. My eyes widen. “What-?” My fath- Nick stares sadly at me. “Jordan came at the door this morning. He told me what happened.” I frown, wanting to say that I wanted to let them know, but if I’m brutally honest with myself, I couldn’t care less if they knew or not. I am however glad that Nick is here. But what Melinda is doing here, I don’t know.   
“What…” I shake my head, that’s not what I want to know. “Why are you here?” A look of hurt flashes over Nick’s face and even Melinda grimaces. “Ouch, bro.” She sits down at my feet. “We care about you. When we heard you were hurt we just jumped into the car and raced here. Like, I’m missing class for you. Dad has taken a day off!” I stare at my adoptive sister in disbelief. Never has she been this nice. It’s almost scary. Nick shakes his head with a small laugh and sits down on the bed too. He lays a hand on my shoulder. “Look, what your sister is trying to say is that you’re family, Chris. You have been since the moment you were adopted. Even though you’re starting to live your own life, you’re still my son. I know we don’t always show it, but we’re here for you.”   
I think my eyes are about as big as saucers when he finishes talking. Not once in my time with this family had anyone been so open about where I stood in this family. Realizing I’m not (and have never been) on the side-lines, my eyes get a little wet. Probably allergies to all this love. When Nick pulls me in for a hug, I’m done for. I sniff a few times, leaving two wet spots in my adoptive father’s shirt.   
As I start to pull away, Nick lets me, being careful because of the injuries.


	5. Awkward

Healing takes a lot more time and effort than I had thought it would. The first two days, Mario made me stay in bed, only letting me get out to shower and to go to the bathroom. On the third day, I was absolutely done with just laying around. Plus, just laying there with either Jeremy, Mario or Jordan next to me. Jordan was entertaining, but Mario and Jeremy were just overbearing. Not to mention, since our kiss it’s been very awkward. And that worries me because even though Jeremy and I went through a lot together, it has never been awkward.   
Jeremy and I started dating when I was around sixteen, he asked me out when we went camping. Last year, we figured we’d be better off as friends since we never really had the romantic thing down. Even though we loved - love - each other very much, we didn’t see a future together. There’s just… love. And that wasn’t enough for the both of us. 

As we’re nearing the end of the trimester, the writers in Mr. Jamison’s class - me included - are supposed to hand in the first half of our manuscripts. For a lot of my classmates that means that they get the time to write and ask questions for the next two weeks. The ones that have already finished more than half of their manuscripts get to sit back and relax. Some of us decided to visit the lecture hall to see and meet some of the guest speakers. While sitting in on a lecture about depression, I receive an email from the main coach of the soccer team telling me that I don’t “have to show my ugly face there again” and that my “fat ass will never be good enough anyway”. How charming. I snort, making a few students look over at me. Whoops. He is right though. I will never be good enough. 

When I walk out of the school I am absolutely shattered. It’s only one in the afternoon but the healing process takes a lot more energy than I had anticipated. I sag against the bus stop, my bag still hanging over my shoulder. There's a blonde girl sitting on the bench, dressed in a long, blue trenchcoat. She seems to just sit there. When the bus gets here, she doesn’t make an attempt to get in. I step into the vehicle and when I look back to ask her if she doesn’t need to get in, she’s gone. Strange. 

I’m lucky enough to get a seat on the normally very busy school bus, but the bus driver doesn’t take any pity on me when he races over every bump in the road.


	6. Down

“You know, someone would think you’re mental,” points Jordan out. I scoff as I pull on some threads that stick out of the small pillow on my lap. “But!” Jordan sticks his finger in the air, like you see your professors do sometimes. “I am not just a someone! I am your bestest friend in the whole world. I believe you when you say that you see things. My dad says that that happens when you have a very creative mind. Or do drugs. Shit, are you on drugs?” Jordan rambles on and I let myself fall backwards on his bed. I love the dude, but sometimes he’s too much. “Jordan focus on your homework, please. You’re the reason we’re stuck in here. I’m probably just hallucinating because of the heat in your room.” 

Jordan and I spend the whole week raising hell through town, dining at Mario’s with Mario and Jeremy, and pre-celebrating my birthday[Chris is een week terug in mekaar geslagen. Je geneest niet zo snel!]. Mrs. Hallihay had gone complaining to mother, but Veronica had just rolled her eyes and thrown the door close in the old woman’s face. Veronica, as she wanted me to call her now, had eased up a bit too since I was beaten up. She still didn’t try to be nice, but she was less… mean. Nick probably talked to her. 

It’s a nice Wednesday when Mario and I go groceries shopping for my birthday party that Saturday. Mario first wanted to throw me a surprise party, but since the past two attempts failed, he just went and organized it with me. We decided that Jeremy would cook, Jordan would take care of all the snacks and Mario would man the bar. I just have to be there and look pretty. Hm, I bet I can even manage to screw that up. 

The party is a blast. Mario’s I packed full of friends from school and a few friends from out of town. Jeremy managed to create a simple buffet and Jordan had made me a big birthday cake. The guys had made a big banner, which looked pretty damn good (damn art students).   
Jeremy and Jordan had invited a lot of friends I don’t even know, but they had all brought presents. 

It was fun. I had a lot of fun, but men am I glad to be away from all the people. Most people I talked with told me how great the party was and how much they liked the food. When I told Jeremy that he was beaming like a little kid. He used to be like that all the time when we went on dates. I let myself fall face-down on my bed, annoyed by how much I still like Jeremy. I think he still has a thing for me too, something in the way he looks at me, but we both don’t talk about it. I don’t know if Mario even noticed that we were ever in a relationship because he never said a thing about it. Then again, the guy knows enough about me and Jer to know that we both like our privacy. When my eyes get droopy I take off my clothes and slide under the covers, falling asleep in no time. 

***

The General marched over the platform, the wind playing with his cape. His movements are stiff because of old battle wounds and his face is grim. A number of recruits graduating this year are dangerously low. We all know that it's worrisome since most of us die in the first few battles. But normally, the Royals didn't share any of those worries. Today, it was clear as day that something was wrong. Even the townsfolk noticed. They were restless, shouting and panicking, waiting for the Queen to stand up and tell them that it would be alright. But she did not stand. Of all the Royals who were seated on the platform, she was the only one smiling. Thriving off the chaos.  
It seemed like hours before the General straightened up and stood in front of the microphone. “Welcome, all, to this eventful day,” he greets the crowd, receiving a lot of cheering in response. “We are gathered here together to celebrate our new recruits! There may not be a lot this year, but they are strong! They are ready! They are willing to protect us all! Let’s give them all a big applause!”   
The crowd went wild when we walked up unto the make-shift stage. I heard Charlie snicker behind me when Andrew whispers something about how we’re going to be famous. I keep my face straight, knowing the General will keep his eyes on me. As one of the weakest in the group, he didn’t approve of me graduating. He didn’t deem me worthy of choosing my weapons. But the Queen had. She had taken one look at me, smiled, and nodded at Lord Stephen. He had written my name on the list where twelve names had been written already. I was the unlucky number thirteen.   
I didn’t understand why she let me graduate, but I was thankful. Growing up as a child of the Templee, we didn’t get a lot of chances to do something back for our kingdom. Being a part of the Royal Guard would be a great way to thank the Queen for her care.

A wide smile almost splits my face in half when I take my stone out of the little box that the queen offered me. She explains that the stone will transform into our weapon over the night. She also tells us to keep it in hand while we sleep, but not in our bed, because a few decades ago some idiot managed to stab himself because his weapon turned out to be a throwing knife. She says it with a sneer, like she thinks it’s a dumb mistake. Swallowing I look at my friends, who look just as nervous as I feel. What if we died tonight because we were impaled by our weapons? 

***

I wake up with a start. That was a really vivid dream. I still feel the cold of the gem in my hands, but when I look at my hands, they’re empty. A vivid dream, but nevertheless a dream.


	7. Doubt

Days after, that dream is still stuck inside my head. I had written it down the morning after, but I haven’t been able to let it go. I’m not sure if I want to discuss it with Jordan, because as much as he supports me, he does go to his dad to vent about things when he doesn’t know how to handle it. This probably classifies as that sort of situation.   
Walking into the library on that Tuesday, I head for the biology section, hoping that I will find the strange man that was there the last two times I visited. This morning I woke up, thinking that I needed to speak to him. Stephen. His name is Stephen. I startle myself thinking that. How do I know that? How? I stand still in the middle of the staircase, feeling absolutely weirded out. It feels like there’s a voice talking to me, but the only voice in my head is my own. I look around me, hoping that no one has seen me, but upstairs there are the two young men I saw across the street from my house a few weeks ago. Charlie and Andrew. I dreamed about them. My eyes widen. How can this be?   
In the spur of the moment I sprint up the stairs, heading for the two young men. They’re sitting at the table that Stephen occupied the other day, looking at me expectantly. I look at them, panting. “Charlie and Andrew, right?” They nod, a slightly surprised look on their faces. After that, no one speaks a word for the next ten minutes. We just look at each other, shifting uncomfortably. The tension in the air is so evidently there that you’d need an axe to knock it down. My eyes roam over the two young men. They’re brothers, that much is clear. They share the same build and skin colour, and their eyes and hair are almost identical. Charlie’s hair seems just a shade darker brown and the same goes for his hazel eyes. They are both tall, even when sitting down, but what stands out the most is their buff-ness. You can see the muscles almost wanting to tear through the fabric of Andrew’s shirt, but not in a body builder way.   
The two seem to be checking me out too, their eyes gliding over my face and body. At one point they share a look and stare at my lower left arm, where a dragon tattoo covers my arm. It’s worked into a sleeve along with dual swords and the words “Dream” and “Nightmare”. Normally people don’t like it, but the brothers look at it with big smiles on their faces. 

Just as I build up the courage to speak up, Stephen walks up to the table, a pile of books in his hands. He sets them down carefully and then looks up at me with a welcoming smile on his face. His eyes are twinkling as the two brothers look at him expectantly. “Hello Christian.” I nod at the man. “Stephen.”   
A wide grin spreads over the man’s face. “You remember!”   
“I don’t… No. I just knew your name. Somehow it popped up in my head. And I… I had a dream. Something about me,” I point at myself and then at the brothers, “and them, graduating.” Stephen nods. “Right. But you can see all of us now, that’s a good sign.”   
That leaves me frowning. “I wasn’t able to see you before? But I saw you at the library.” The man starts explaining some things to me, about how when I saw him for the first time, the brothers had been there too. They hadn’t expected to see me, which explained their reactions.   
What Stephen didn’t explain, was how I at first couldn’t see them and later I could. He also didn’t explain why only I could see them. When he finishes talking, my head is spinning. Words and thoughts are overflowing my head, making me eager to leave. I just really have to think. 

I stand up, thanking him and then I practically run out. Father Time. Stephen is father Time. I shake my head. No, that’s crazy. I’m going crazy. Once outside, I can finally breathe. I slide down against the wall, my knees pulled up to my chest. I drop my head in my folded arms, just trying to get calm again, but my mind keeps running. Spirits. They’re spirits. You are a spirit.   
“Who are you?” I ask the voice in my head, but it’s useless. I know it’s me. It’s my voice. Someone snickers next to me, causing me to look up. I know that guy. It’s the same guy who beat me up last time, only this time he’s alone. But that’s not how I know him. The guy is looking at me with a menacing look. “Ah look at that, the baby is back for another beating.”   
“Are you sure you can take me on alone?” I sneer. The guy laughs. “Of course I can.” He then strikes me hard against my head, making my head go spinning. I try to hit back, but it’s like he’s made out of rock. “Fucker,” I hiss, and the guy laughs. “You can call me Alfie.” Then he strikes again, and I’m out. Again.   
***

We won the battle that day. There weren’t many losses, all of the new graduates had survived. Charlie and I had been leading the troupes on the front, while Andrew had taken a small group to attack the Adium from behind. We killed hundreds of them, captured about nine and sent the rest running. Charlie went after them, trying to figure out their whereabouts. I was glad, I didn’t want him there when I died.   
While taking on a group of the Adium Warriors, I had been stabbed in the side. It had been mostly painless, but the blood loss made my head spin. I knew I didn’t have a lot of time left until I fell over, so I had summoned The Ryder. Charlie had followed my lead, summoning The Prince of Darkness. 

After that, things went quick. Charlie had mounted a horse and had, followed by two of our best knights, chased after the Adium. When Andrew returned, I had already been transported to my private rooms in our lair. He visited me, looking tousled and mad. “You let him go! You let him go while you knew you were hurt! He’s not going to forgive you for this! Hell, he’ll never be able to forgive me for not stopping him! Do you even REALIZE what you’ve done?” with that he broke down at my side, sobbing into my sheets. I put my hand on his head, brushing through his hair. “It’s alright,” my voice sounded raspy as I tried to reassure my best friend, “He’ll forgive us. He would have done the same thing.”   
“You can’t leave me. You just can’t,” his voice cracked and I shushed him, caressing his face. “I won’t leave you, Andy. I’ll always be here,” I pointed at his heart, but my hand fell away too soon. With no energy left, I tried to tell him that he’ll always be my brother, but I couldn’t get any words out. I didn’t have any air left. The sides of my vision started to get more blurry, darkening. Then, without any of us suspecting it, there was nothing left. And I felt like falling. 

***

I get to because of a slap in my face by a warm hand. I frown, I don’t remember going to bed. “Wake up, Christian,” a warm and familiar voice sounds. Looking up I see Stephen’s face, very close to mine. I groan, “Please don’t tell me you tried to kiss me awake?” The joke gets lost in another groan, this time because of the pain in my head. Dammit. The older man smiles and shakes his head. “Of course not.”   
A wave of dizziness washes over me as I remember my dream. “I died,” I breathe out, making Stephen look at me in shock. “How do you know?”   
“I dreamed. I have been dreaming things for a while. Battles, balls, hunts… But this time, I died. Andrew was there. I let Charlie go and fight… the Adium? What’s happening, Father?” I shrink back the moment I call the man father, but he just smiles. “You’re remembering, Chris. I can’t help you, or fill in the blanks because you have to remember for yourself. But it will be alright, I promise. We will stay here.” The man reassures me and finally I feel steady enough to look up. I see Charlie and Andrew looking at me with worry. Next to them is a girl, slightly younger than the two brothers. She too seems familiar, but there doesn’t pop a name up, like with the others. Her hair looked better when the dark blue was in it. The voice in my head – my voice – speaks to me as if it’s another, older version of me. Normally I wouldn’t say those things to strangers, but this time I repeat the words to her. Tears form at the corners of her eyes and she smiles and nods, making her blonde and brown locks bounce. “I’ll dye it again soon,” she promises me and I grin. She feels like an old friend. 

I turn up at Mario’s with a black and blue face and a slight limp. He takes one look at me and all the colour drains from his face. “What happened?” I grin at the worried Italian. “I got beaten up again. But I know who it was now. Is Jeremy here?” Just as I say that, Jeremy appears from behind the counter. “What the hell happened to your face?” Instead of answering him, I look him dead in the eye. “Alfie. He’s your ex, right?” Jeremy nods grimly, his eyes shooting fire. “He did this?” his voice is scarily calm, making me shiver. An angry Jeremy is a very scary Jeremy. I’m almost too startled at his anger to nod, but I manage to do it. With that confirmation Jeremy just storms out of the cafe, the door slamming closed behind him.   
“He took it pretty well…” Mario comments dryly. I grimace, but nod. It could have gone way worse.   
It turned out that Alfie fled town before Jeremy could get to him. It didn’t bother me a lot, but three says later Jeremy is still fuming. I already gave up on calming him down, knowing that he’ll calm down when he’s ready. Mario was however bothered by his employee’s behavior, saying he’s scaring away the costumers. It honestly isn’t that bad since Jeremy is mostly in the kitchen, but still. I think it’s Mario’s way of trying to get him to get on terms with what happened.   
Mario had pulled me apart yesterday, telling me that it wasn’t my fault. I know that. It just feels like I somehow provoked Alfie and that Jeremy is mad at me for that. He probably is mad at me.[Ga meer in op Chris zijn gevoelens. De lezer mag merken dat hij zichzelf niet waardig vindt.] I pull a face and wrap my hands around my hot chocolate, staring at my laptop screen. I’ve been working on the last chapter of my manuscript and I’m SO close to finishing it that I almost don’t want it to end. Keyword: almost. I really want to be able to hand it in before the end of the day, a few days before the deadline.

Jeremy brings me my dinner at the end of his shift, sliding into the chair in front of me with his own plate too. “Hey,” he murmurs, looking a bit guilty. I smile up at him. “Hey you, thanks for dinner.” He shrugs. “’Least I could do after Tuesday.”   
I bite my lip. Should I? No. “It was a normal reaction, Jer. I just hope that you’re okay now.” Jeremy starts laughing. “If I’m okay? Chris, have you looked into the mirror lately? I should be making sure that you are okay! I should have made sure you were okay days ago.” My friend reaches out to me, cupping my face in his hand. His eyes bore into mine and I’m sure I feel something inside me just melt. “Are you okay, Chrissy?”   
I nod, then shake my head, and then nod again. “I’m sorry,” I tell him after a few moments of silence. Jeremy shakes his head, his blond curls bouncing around. “No Chrissy, you don’t understand. You don’t have to be sorry. I lost control. I should have made sure that you were okay. I shouldn’t have let my feelings take over.” He moves his chair right next to mine and hugs me. We stay there for a while, forgetting all about the plates on the table or the other people in the café. We miss the sad but satisfied smile on Mario’s face. We also miss the fact that Jordan snaps a picture of us. Overall, I just missed Jeremy’s comforting touch.


	8. Mental

“Christian, come here,” my mother demands. I shake my head, I don’t want to say goodbye. “Ma, no. You can’t go.” My mother turns her head to me, her wrinkled face displaying sadness. “Chrissy, baby, please.” I reculantly take a seat next to her, holding her had tight. She feels cold to the touch, like she’s gone already. “Momma, no. Please don’t leave me here. You can’t-“ A sob leaves my mouth and tears start rolling down my face. My mother uses her last energy to wipe away some of my tears. “My baby boy, you’ll be okay. You’re going to do so many great things.” She then closes her eyes, her breath speeding up, becoming more shallow. Then it stops. “No, momma, no. You can’t leave yet. Mom!” 

I wake up yelling for my mother. A mother I never met. She looked and felt so real. I sit up, my hand reaching for the wetness on my face. “Wow…” I mutter. After Stephen had told me that those dreams would help me remember, I’ve been dreaming every night. I started writing everything down, the lands I visit, the people I meet, the people I lose. My mother… she had been beautiful, even at old age.   
I take my time describing her, not wanting to miss a single detail. I should ask Caroline to make a drawing of her.  
Caroline… It suits her. I smile as the girl comes to my memory, dressed in stylish clothes, her long blonde hair in a ponytail. The underside of her hair turned a dark, midnight-ish blue when she too became immortal. She was the last to join us. She also was the youngest. When we formed a group, Stephen had kissed us all on the forehead, telling us how sorry he was. We didn’t understand why at the time, but after a few decades, we did. We started losing people. As we stayed young forever, the people around us grew older. That is how I lost my mother. About my father, I have yet to learn. 

I meet up with Jordan on the first Wednesday of August, getting ice creams and laughing at the stories that Jordan tells. It is summer break and Jordan and I both finished every assignment we got, so we can just do nothing for the next eight weeks. “So Kevin starts bragging about how his brother managed to beat up some weird kid and then the whole class started telling stories about how they once beat up someone? I don’t get that, Chris, like, why would you want to beat up some kid?” Jordan takes a bite from his ice lolly, looking at me with his innocent eyes. I shrug and shake my head. “I don’t know, man. I- Wait, did you say Kevin?” My eyes widen in realization. Alfie had three brothers. Joel, Calvin and Kevin[Ga meer in op de familiebanden van de vier broers, de lezer moet zich kunnen herinneren wie ze zijn]. Jason nods. “Yeah, why?”   
“Kevin’s brother was the one who beat me up. Alfie. Jeremy’s ex-boyfriend,” I explain. My best friend’s eyes grow wide and his mouth falls open. “Shit, dude.” 

Walking into the library the following day I greet Jaimee, the summer help. He waves shyly, telling me that I can always come to him if I can’t find the books I need. I thank him before heading upstairs. I spot Caroline first and I walk straight up to her, hugging her. I dreamt about her last night. I saw her die on the battlefield. I was the one to bring her to her chambers, and wait until she woke up. It was a long process, but when her hair turned into that beautiful blue, I knew it.   
Pulling away from the hug, she looks at me with surprise but also a glint of happiness on her face. “What was that for?” I shrug and smile. “I’m glad you managed to dye your hair blue again. Brown just wasn’t your colour.” Charlie snickers and Andrew nods. “We’ve been trying to tell her that for years. Like, for over nine years!” Caroline laughs, making me smile. It’s a sound that I missed hearing.   
I sit down at the table and place my notebook in front of me. Stephen looks at me questioningly, asking for permission to read it. I nod and then turn to Caroline. “Ro, will you draw something for me?”   
“Sure, whatever you want,” she beams. I smile sadly and explain that I dreamt about how my mother passed away. “Would you make a portrait of her?[Vergeet niet dat hij het portret ook moet krijgen later!]” The others nod in understanding. They must have been there for me after she died.   
Two days later, Caroline shows up in my room, with a portrait of my mother. It is beautiful. “Thanks Car, it means the world to me,” I thank her, hugging her. She smiles and sniffles. “I miss her, Ryder. She was like a mother to me too.” 

Caroline and I spend a lot of time together that week. Every time I wake up, I wake up knowing a little more about who I am. Not only Caroline helps a lot in this, the brothers are helpful too. We spar a lot in the middle of the forest on the other side of town, pulling me down into memories. Most of those memories are about training, but a few bring me back to battles. Horrible, bloody battles. I remember how I lost good friends in battle, crying out their names when they fall.   
On the days I remember thing about battles, I fear going to bed. I don’t want to remember the people I lost, because I realize that I have lost a lot of people. [Vergeet niet de paniek die Chris voelt als hij erachter komt dat hij een spirit is en welke verantwoordelijkheden daarbij komen. Hij is een mens nu!]  
***

After the first twenty battles, it gets easier. We fell into a rhythm, me and the brothers, trying to stay on the front, hoping to protect the newer soldiers. We tried to teach them that even though we’re scared and we’re young, we also had guts and manpower. We could defeat any enemy.   
I was twenty-one when I realized that there was no one to protect us. The brothers and me put our lives on the line for our fellow soldiers, but never did it have to be the other way around. There weren’t a lot of soldiers older than we were, most of the people who made it past twenty-five went to settle down and have children. Some never fell in love and kept fighting. Some couldn’t go without fighting. Others, they just felt like they had to be there for the Kingdom. My father was one of those people. After I had turned ten, he had re-joined the soldiers. After I became a Guard myself, I wondered so many times how my father survived for this long.  
I remembered the Battle of the third island of Idalians. It was the only battle my dad and I fought side by side. I remember us being proud. We wrote my mother a letter that we would finally find out how much my father and I were alike. Too much. We fought the same way, in sync, both trying to impress each other. We would give up our lives to save the other.   
My father did. 

***

I wake up that morning feeling bad. I realize that I want to stop remembering. No more. I can’t stand it anymore. Because I’m remembering it again, I’m reliving it. The moment the memory comes to me, I know it again, so it’s like reliving the past. 

I storm into the library, slapping my notebook on the table in front of Stephen. “Make it stop,” I demand. The man’s eyes stay on his book, making me more angry. “Are you listening to me?” I yell, probably being too loud seeing the location, but at the moment, I don’t give a single shit. “Make. It. STOP.” This time I growl, feeling my insides burn and turn. My vision blurs for a moment, so I blink a few times. I’m surprised when I feel wetness trickling down my cheeks.  
I don’t notice Stephen standing up or him walking towards me, but I do notice it when he wraps his arms around me. I freeze for a moment, not knowing what to do, but after a while I lean into his warmth. That’s when the first sobs leave my mouth. My whole body just starts shaking as the tears stream down my face. Stephen tells me that it’s going to be alright. I want to scream at him, tell him it’s not alright. Tell him that I want this to stop. I don’t want these memories. I don’t want to lose any more people.   
We stay like that for a long time. Eventually I get tired. My body is still slightly shaking and my breath uncontrolled, I can no longer keep standing. Stephen takes me and sits down with me on his lap, making me feel like a young boy seeing Santa at the mall. “It’s okay, Chris,” the older man tells me. I shake my head. “It’s not. I can’t do this.”


	9. Breaking

I don’t sleep that night. Trying to keep myself awake, I took cold showers and watched multiple movies. When the morning comes along, I feel like a zombie, and the look Nick gives me tells me that I look like it too. “Kid, did you sleep at all last night?” he asks me when he ours himself a cup of coffee. I glare at him. “Man, no I did not.” Nick laughs. “I thought so. I heard you shuffle around the room a lot last night.” I pull up my eyebrows. “That means you didn’t sleep either.” My adoptive father laughs loudly. “I slept, but you forget that I’m a light sleeper!”   
After that conversation, we both leave. Nick goes to the airport, going away for another two weeks for a company take-over. I make sure I have my backpack packed before I head over to Mario’s for some much needed coffee before I step into my car to go head to Green Mountain. 

I don’t stop moving until I’m over halfway the mountain. I’m out of breath and my vision starts to blur, so I take a water bottle out of my bag and chug it down. After that I continue, climbing up and up, stopping for nothing. There are no other climbers, but then again, most people from around town aren’t that active. I cross the point where I’d normally stop to let Sid drink and I walk a little faster. I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to think about anything right now.   
It takes me longer than usual to reach the top. Maybe because I fell three times on a very steep path. Maybe because I couldn’t get the knots in my rope figured out. Maybe even because my limbs failed me when trying to climb the last part. But I managed it. 

The top of the mountain has always been one of my favorite places to come. It has a perfect view over the town, I can even see at what’s going on in the forest from here. What are those flashes of light? I look again, seeing small flashes of light hit each other and silently explode mid-air. There are two colors of the light, one seems very silvery while the other is a dark shade of gray. The gray one still seems bright, which seems odd. Charlie and Andrew are training. With their swords. And with that thought I get pulled into a memory. 

***

I wake up to the sound of metal clashing and shouting outside of the tent. I groan. The brothers are at it again. For a moment I debate what to do, but then I roll out of my make-shift blankets. I better stop them before they wake up the entire Fairy village two kilometers away. They have done it before. Woken up an entire village of magical beings.   
I step out of the tent, seeing two shirtless males full of testosterone look at each other in anger. “Seriously?” I ask, sounding very annoyed. Charlie turns his face to me and shrugs before charging at his brother again. “GUYS.” They stop, lowering their swords this time. Sighing I sit down in the somewhat damp grass. “Thank you.”   
Andrew points his sword at his brother, trying to look innocent. “He started it?” 

***

I snap into the real world with a start. Instead of standing up like I was before, I’m lying on my back on the solid rocks of the mountain. “Shit!” Standing up I brush off the dirt that’s gotten on my jeans and top. My head is spinning and my hands are trembling like crazy, so I sit down on a flat rock, pulling my backpack towards me to get another bottle of water and a sandwich. I don’t remember taking that off. “I’m going crazy. Absolutely batshit crazy.” I laugh. “Oh look at that, I even started talking to myself! Mental!”   
Shaking my head I just sit there and eat for a while. The flashes of light have stopped and there is no movement in the town. It’s almost as if time is standing still. The thought makes me smile. Stephen used to do that sometimes, pausing time. Only the spirits would be able to move and speak freely, so it was sort of like having a moment to yourself. It’s like one of those moments where you have a cup of coffee and a book and you’re curled up in your most comfortable little space.   
Stephen. Father Time. He’s stopping time right now.

***

“Stephen, please! You have to stop time! Let me save them!” I practically begged the man. Andrew had his arms wrapped around my middle, holding me back from physically attacking the man. “Chris, calm down. He can’t,” Andrew’s broken voice tells me. I struggle, but just like the others, I am drained. I drop down on my knees, watching helplessly as the last group of warriors gets sucked in by a tornado of darkness. Andrew presses his face into my shoulder, trying to get a grip on is emotions. Charlie and Caroline are still nowhere to be seen. 

***

“Stop! Just stop,” I yell, panic lacing in my voice. A flash of pain erupts in my chest, sending me to the ground. The thought of losing Charlie and Caroline hurts so much. I know they survived. They are here, with me. In this boring and dumb town that’s way too small for me. Letting out a loud scream, tears start to blur my vision. “Why?” I try to blink the tears away, but there are too many. “Why is this happening to me? What am I?”  
Suddenly there is a warm hand on my back. Just rubbing circles, the warm hand sends tingles up my spine. This is the first time someone really comforted me without being forced to. Sobs rack through my body as silent tears fall to the ground. “Just make it stop,” I whimper. The person behind me pulls me into his body and we rock back and forth. He shushes me and I finally notice that it’s Charlie holding me. “I’m sorry,” I tell him, my voice hoarse and eyes still wet. He just shakes his head. “No need to be sorry, Rye.” Rye.

***

We sat on top of a hill, staring at absolutely nothing. Around us, everything is blackened. “I hate that this is the only way to get some time alone,” Charlie groans. “Seriously Rye, you’d think Stephen is attached to my back or something.” I grin at him, it had been a while since he called me that. “He’s worried about you. He thinks you might lose it.”   
“Why, because I’m the emotional one?” I nodded, he’s right. As one of my best friends, I knew how to read his emotions. He took emotional blows the hardest too. But he was young. We all were. Charlie had only turned into a spirit nine years ago. Andrew eleven. Me? My human form died thirteen years ago. I would forever be stuck on twenty-three.   
“Come on, Ryder,” Charlie said, standing up. “We have to get back to the rest.”

***

“You kind of keep falling into them, aren’t you?” Charlie asks me, eyeing me worriedly. I nod, my energy levels dropping quickly. “I don’t know if I can keep doing this.” It dawns on me that I’m still curled up into Charlie’s body heat and I start to move, but Charlie puts a hand on my shoulder, keeping me in place. “Don’t move, I’m comfy. We used to sit like this all the time. I missed this,” my best friend murmurs. I look at him. Really look at him this time. A clean scar cuts through his right eyebrow and his hazel eyes have little dark grey specks in them. If you look closely, you see the specks floating around in his eyes. They’re pretty. But then again Lucian has always had a pretty face.   
“Lucian?” 

***

“Charlie Lucian Jacobs, at your service.” The guy looking a lot like Andrew saluted and grinned at me. I stuck out my hand and he grabbed it, shaking it with a happy expression on his face. “Christian Arthur Ryder, nice to meet you.”   
We didn’t talk a lot after the introduction, but we shared some looks and laughs, which told me that we were going to get along pretty well. Charlie roomed with me and Andrew, my original roommate. I hadn’t expected anything else, really. They tended to put siblings together. 

One night we just sat on my bed, looking at the stars, drinking. “You know, when I get famous, everyone is going to be calling me some fancy name, like Prince Charles,” slurred a slightly drunken Charlie. I laughed. “I will be calling you Luci forever. And you probably won’t ever stop calling me Rye. But! When I’m famous, they’ll call me The Ryder. I’ll become a myth.” 

***

This time it takes me a while to open my eyes again. My whole body feels like a big lump of jelly and I have trouble moving. Charlie’s hand is in my hair, curling it around his fingers, moving it to different sides. “You were out for a while,” he comments silently. I grunt as a response, earning myself a laugh. Charlie’s laugh is clear and true. “I remembered when we met,” I start to tell my friend. He nods, encouraging me to go on. I tell him about the smaller memories, the ones I like. Then the happy ones. There are a lot of those. We spent a lot of time happy. But then I bring up the more sad ones. “I saw both my parents die,” I start telling him without looking into his big, round eyes. “How my dad saved me. If I would have died back then, I’d still look nineteen. He bought me a few years.” I smile, but it’s forced. “Then my mother. She died of old age, but still, it’s heart breaking. It’s dreaming about losing a mother I had in a different life. A mother I always hoped for in this. And then losing her.” [Mag veeeeel dramatischer. Hij wordt gek van wat er allemaal gebeurt. Laat het merken!]  
Charlie nods, his eyes full of understanding. He had been there of course. I take a deep breath before continuing. “And then- Then I kept remembering things like losing you and Andrew. The fear that comes with it. And then there’s his thing about us being Spirits? Like, I realised we weren’t human a while ago, but aren’t spirits dead? Is that why normal people can’t see you?” I keep rambling, throwing all my thoughts out in the open. Charlie just sits there and listens, nodding along and sometimes cutting in to clarify some things. 

We spend the entire rest of the day like that, only returning to the library when the sky starts to change colours. I calmed down a great deal, but I still feel on edge and scared. Stephen looks at me like he knows what has been going on today and pulls me in for a hug. I soak up his warmth for a moment before pulling away and thanking him. I shoot a quick smile at Andrew and Caroline, who are discussing the pros and cons of a broadsword. Charlie lays a hand on my shoulder. “We’ll help you through this.”


	10. Hurt

The memories are coming much quicker lately. Even without sleep they hit me at random intervals. It scared the shit out of Mario when it happened when I was getting coffee last week. He had literally picked me up and sat me down on one of the couches, bringing me a hot chocolate and something sugary to snack on. I didn’t know how to tell him that I didn’t just randomly pass out.   
I stopped training with the brothers for a while too, since the risk of me getting hurt is too big. I do spend time with them, talking about the moments I do remember and watching them spar. Andrew and I have been doing a lot of things together too. We go on hikes, climb trees and even build a campfire one night. It’s nice, spending time with friends. Because that’s what they are, my friends.[Jordan is ondertussen al naar de andere kant van het land gevlogen voor het vervolg van zijn studie] I may not remember all the things we shared, but right now, I’ll take what I can get.

Today I decide to take Charlie and Andrew out to the river to do something else than just climb and spar. The music in my car is cranked up to its loudest and we’re singing along to every song that the radio plays. I’d say I was surprised by the amount of songs that they know, but since they’re thousands of years old, it’s not that weird. Since it’s a five hour car drive to the river, we decided to stay there for a few days, so the back of my truck is full of bags and food. Nick had given me money to buy a tent and to pay for the food, but just like last time[Vertel wat Chris de laatste keer heeft gekocht!], he gave way too much, giving me the chance to buy some new shorts and sneakers.   
It’s somewhere in the afternoon when we arrive and since it’s so damned hot, I get rid of my shirt as soon as I step out of the car. My hands feel kind of clammy after holding the steering wheel for such a long time and I wipe them on my jeans. I look at the two others and find them staring at the tattoo on my ba[Verwijder de dual swords van de tattoo op Chris zijn linker onderarm! Die zitten op zijn rug]ck. Chuckling I raise an eyebrow. “Like what you see?”   
“You have your swords… on your back. How did you know?” Andrew’s mouth is wide open and Charlie blinks as if he can’t believe it. I look at the both of them before realizing that the dual swords on my back are my weapons. My actual weapons. From back then.   
It all makes sense right then and there. The stone that the Queen had given me had turned into the two swords. But the stone had given me so much more. It had given me immortality. It had given me powers. It had chosen me as a Spirit.

***[Er moet hier een stuk omheen, maar dit wil ik erin!]

“My Queen,” I bow to the woman in front of me smirking. She it when I call her that. Or bow to her. “Get up and sit next to me, brat. Tell me what you want, but fast, I am a very busy woman.” I grin and sit next to her on the big sofa. “Have you thought about it?” she asks me before I can get a word out. I nod. “That’s why I’m here, Lena,” my voice gets more serious now. “I don’t think he’ll make it of we go now. I don’t know if he’ll make it at all.” [Flashbacks/memories in de past time!!!]  
Hurt crosses the woman’s face and she bites her lip. I want to comfort her, but since I’m not in full control of my powers at that, I don’t trust myself. Elena takes a deep breath before looking at me again. “What do-”   
“His dreams say?” I finish for her. At the moment Elena doesn’t look like a queen, but just like any other worried mother. It hurts, seeing her so imperfect. “He is close to giving up. He just wants you there, to play…” A lump forms in my throat and I have to swallow a few times. “He just wants to play some more games.” I almost spit the last few words out. They leave a bitter taste. I hated having to tell someone so dear to me that her son wouldn’t make it. Her son, who had become loved in our group. For whom we had put out trainings to the side to play a game. For whom we fought wars.   
There is a lost look in the eyes of my Queen. The realisation that she will lose the son she loved for seven years. Seven short years that had flown by.   
It was time that even Father Time couldn’t give us. I look away, not wanting to lose my composure when Elena breaks down completely. She puts her face in my chest, staining my linen shirt with tears. At that point, I didn’t have a choice but to comfort her. I reculantly put my hand on her back and rub circles. Her body shakes as sobs rack through it. “Shhh, it will be alright. His dreams told me. he’ll be fine. You taught him well.” 

***

Waking up the next morning I feel sad. The boy’s name had been Jordan and it reminded me of my best friend. Since he left for school, we hadn’t really talked and I missed him. Normally I’d tell him everything, but I can’t talk to him about the Spirit thing. I start making scrambles eggs and throw some buns of bread onto the raster on the fire.   
The crackling of the fire reminds me of the times that Mr. Johns- Danny took Jordan and I out camping. He would tell us stories about magical beings and hidden artefacts. We always thought they were made up, but when I started following his lessons, I realized he told us summaries of his favourite books. Sitting around the fire, curled up in thick blankets, Danny would take out a bag of marshmallows and a thermos flask filled with hot cocoa. We’d curl up in our tents after, already half asleep, covered in blankets.  
“Chris? Whaddaya doin’ up?” A sleepy Andrew sticks his head outside his tent, forming a somewhat amusing picture. I grin at my messy haired friend. “Making breakfast. Eggs and buns.”   
That makes him roll out his tent. He looks a lot more awake than he did not even a minute ago. “I’m always up for eggs. Haven’t had them in ages!” The fire burns nicely, so the buns are ready in no time. We then sit there eating our breakfast in silence since Charlie is still asleep. The weirdo didn’t sleep until the sun began to rise again, so we just let him sleep. Not that spirits need a lot of sleep, they just prefer to because it keeps their powers at their maximum capacity.   
“So, since mister lazy is still asleep, what do you want to do?” Andrew asks, leaning backwards against a log. I shrug and look at the water. “We could swim? The current isn’t very strong here, so it should be save. Plus, if we die, there are no major consequences except for a speech from Steph.” That makes the brown haired guy in front of me laugh. “Yeah, but those are the worst.” We stand up and go change in our tents before practically running into the water. I pull on Andrews arm, making him fall flat into the water. “You ass!” he yells before dunking me, making me choke on water.   
We mess around like that for a while, neither of us getting very tired since well… Andrew is a spirit and I may be turning back into a spirit as well. I feel it in the small things, such as me remembering everything yesterday. That kind of was a big hint. But also the me not needing sleep last night, and the food not doing anything for me. it’s just for the taste. It’s like giving your character health potions while they’re already at full health.   
I stop when I feel something change in my body. At first it’s just a tiny tickle, but then it feels like my skin is moving on my body and I let out a shout, startling Andrew. Panic rises in me when I realise that I have no idea where to go and I’m glad Andrew decides to pull me on the shore. It feels like my skin is being ripped off of my back and I scream. Loudly. I lay there on the ground, squirming and moaning in pain until it finally stops. Just like that, like nothing ever happened. Only that I’m lying on something very uncomfortable. I stand up and expect Andrew to be there right at my side, but he just stands there, staring at the ground where I was just lying.   
I shake the water and sweat out of my hair before turning around to see what Andrew is staring at. There are two identical swords on the ground. Black as the night with a single emerald in the heft. “What the actual…” we both just stand there, looking at the two weapons on the ground. It’s Charlie who breaks the silence. “Guys what’s- wow, Chris how did you get your swords back?”   
I shrug helplessly. “They grew out of my back.”   
“That’s creepy,” comments Charlie. His brother scoffs. “It’s freaking terrifying.”   
“Thanks,” I say dryly. Then I realise that they most have formed out of my tattoos and I try to feel my back. “Are my tats still there?” Andrew and Charlie shake their heads, so I pick up the dual swords and stare at them in wonder. I make a few moves, feeling them flow around like it’s completely natural and I smile. That smile disappears when the swords do. “What the actual…”   
“They’re back. On your back, I mean.” Charlie sounds a bit weirded out by it and feel the exact same. They weren’t like that before. Before they were actual swords in their sheath, but now they literally come out of my back. “I hope they don’t do that every time, because getting them out will be a bitch,” comments Charlie, his eyebrows raised to his hairline. I nod and then burst out in laughter because this whole situation is just weird. The brother join, leaving us like total laughing messes on the ground. Andrew and I are still dripping wet and Charlie just woke up, so we look like a couple of lunatics. Shaking my head I sit up. This is one more sign that I’m actually turning into a guardian again. Maybe it happens like this because I didn’t die this time. I decide to bring it up, making the brother look at me with a weird look. “But we only became spirits because we died.”   
“Maybe not. Maybe we already were and us dying made It more… permanent?” Charlie nods, it was something we discussed a lot in the beginning. “Do we need to talk to Stephen about this?” he gestures to me, so I assume he’s talking about the whole “I’m becoming a spirit again” thing. I shake my head. “No, he knows already. He has known since I started remembering. I mean, he never told me, but me remembering isn’t what is supposed to happen when I’m human, that’s what we agreed on. I wouldn’t remember until I lived my whole human life and died.” 

We sit and talk about it for a long time after. Though, we did clean up first. Now Charlie is making coffee and Andrew is trying to make sense of the package of cheesy macaroni. I’m honestly just trying to get the swords to grow out of my back. I have to control this. I keep repeating to myself. Like some sort of mantra. I’m pretty sure that I started saying it out loud after a while, because Andrew chucks the box of macaroni at my head. “Shut up and help me,” he sort of… whines? It makes me chuckle, but I grab the box and empty the whole thing in the pot before adding a bag of grated cheesy and water before putting on the lid and setting it in the fire. 

We eat. Even though none of us need to, we eat. All lost in our own thoughts, we keep scooping up the macaroni and shove it into our mouths. I keep trying to think of ways to get the swords to be actual swords again, but there’s nothing. No magical word, no weird gesture, not even the command of them appearing. Eventually the cheese begins to annoy me and I glare at it. I think it glared back. “I’m going crazy,” I state. Charlie looks up with one raised eyebrow and Andrew snorts. “We noticed,” they both say at the same time. We decide to go canoeing. It’s dark, the water got wild, and anyone else would have said that we are absolutely mental, but we do it. We get the boat ready, pack a bag and just jump in. 

The water is absolutely out to murder us. We almost keel over about nine times and at the end of the river we are wet, dirty and we stink. I don’t even know how we managed to get to the end alive, but we did. Now we just have to get the stupid boat back to the camping place. “Your ideas suck. Next time we go with my idea,” mumbles a soaked Andrew. I scoff and shake my head. “hell no, you wanted me to fly up in the sky and then drop so we could sky dive.”   
“We’ve done that before!” Andre defends himself. I look at him, shaking my head. “May I remind you that I could actually fly back then?”   
“So?”  
“Since I can’t actually fly right now, that would be a horrible idea and we would all break our bones. And since we don’t actually die, we would be in great agony.” I feel like my eyebrows are going to fall off with all the times I raised them today, but I do it again anyway. Charlie holds up his finger. “There is still a chance that you can actually die, seeing you don’t have all of your abilities back yet.”  
“Smartass,” both Andrew and I mutter. We burst out in laughter. Again.


	11. Red and Blue

In the weeks after, we locked ourselves in my room. We decided that it was a very convenient place to meet. It was big and had enough space for us to sit. Plus, my adoptive mother wouldn’t bother us since she decided to go on a cruise with two of her friends from the book club. Nick had come home for a few days, but he got called in for some meetings all over the continent, so I had the place for myself. I didn’t go to Mario’s for a week, with the result that he is now in front of my door with a big bag will of food and standard full of drinks. “Chris! I was worried you we’re in the hospital!” the man looks so worried that he might pass out. I send him a reassuring smile and open my mouth to say something, but Stephen is faster. “I’m sorry, sir. I have been spending time with my nephew. I only found him about three weeks ago, so I have been getting to know him.”   
Used to the way Stephen is able to make up quick excuses I smile and nod enthusiastically. My nod makes Mario’s face break out in a big grin, his eyes glistening. “Oh, Chris, I’m so happy for you!” he tells me before grabbing Stephen’s hand and shaking it with a lot of force. I’m glad that Stephen is a lot stronger than it seems, because otherwise his hand would have been broken. “I’m Mario, I own the café where Chris spends a lot of his time.”   
My so-called uncle smiles and makes his eyes widen. “So you’re the famous Mario, I’ve been wanting to meet you, Christian talks about you a lot!” This makes Mario’s smile even bigger, it’s almost splitting his face into two. “I brought food! And those muffins that Chris really likes!”   
The two continue talking, so I just grab the bag and the drinks from the porch where Mario put them and head on inside. “FOOD,” I yell through the house, making my friends practically race towards me. Charlie and Sid used to do that too. Wait. 

I keep thinking about my two huskies all through the rest of the day. Of all the things I remember, none of them included my dogs. That means I still don’t remember everything. I sit down on one of the big pillows in the library that Nick had installed a few weeks ago when I was beat up. It was his way of saying sorry for not being there. My adoptive family likes to solve things with money.   
Leaning back against a bookcase, I take out a new journal and start writing the things I remember about Charlie and Sid. Sid is somewhat easy, because he’s an exact replica of the Sid I had in the past few years. Charlie however, is a lot more difficult. Charlie was a blue coated husky. He was always the more serious one. I used to joke that he was Charlie Lucian in dog form. He’s also the reason that I called Charlie Luci or Lucian most of the time, since it would have been confusing to travel with two Charlies.   
The two dogs would always follow me around, they did that since I was fifteen when we…

***

We took a portal to the lands of Welician. The lands of Welician were not travelled a lot. Only a few went out there to see what roamed the lands, but no one returned. People assumed they died, but I thought they had found things to stay for. People. Riches. Love.   
Mother was concerned as she watched me go, I could tell, but I wanted to go. Charlie and Sid had just turned one the other day, so they could go for a trip. It would give me the time to train with the two dogs, but it would also be a trip of self-discovery. For me, it was a way to escape from a decision that was waiting for me to be made. Did I want to fight or take care of the Templee? It was pretty ridiculous that that choice had to be made at the age of fifteen.

Sid nudged my hand the moment we land. Charlie stayed in front of me, trying to be the barrier between me and the unknown. What a great dog to have by your side. When nothing seemed to rush at us from the forest, I decided to take a look around. We were surrounded by mountains and forests, but a little further there was the shimmering of water. I walked towards it, assuming that the dogs would follow my lead, which they did. Sid trailed behind me, looking at everything surrounding us. Charlie stayed in front of me, sniffing the air and the ground. His protective nature took over when a sounds came from behind a few bushes and he started growling, making the figure squeal. “Don’t hurt me!” a high-pitched voice yelled in fear. “We won’t,” I assured the figure. “Please come out?”   
The figure stood up and kept rising until it had reached its full length. I gaped at him. The creature was over four meters long, very leafy and had horns all over his head and neck. He had three legs and five arms, and I was extremely confused about how he was able to hide behind those small bushes. Knowing that he was more scared of us, made me less scared of the creature, but I still was weary. Charlie and Sid were sitting at my feet, their chests a bit puffed, like they wanted to impress someone. I didn’t know if they meant me or the creature. “Who are you?” the creature looks at me quizzingly. I wanted to make a smart remark, but then I realized that I was a guest on this land. “My name is Christian, these are my dogs, Sid and Charlie,” I told him, pointing at the two huskies. They looked up at me with bright eyes and I smiled at them. The creature beamed. “We’ve never had dogs here! How exciting! We have images of them in books, though, but they seem kind of different,” the creature looked a bit puzzled and I laughed, I couldn’t help it. “There are all sorts of dog breeds in the world. Charlie and Sid are huskies,” I explained, making the creature beam. “They seem very intelligent. Is it okay for me to touch them?” I nodded and gestured him to go ahead. Both dogs would know if the creature was harmful in any way or not. The creature then seemed to remember his manners and stuck out one of his hands for me to shake. “My name is Bob, I am a Rederco. You won’t find a lot of us here since we like to hide out in the meadows, but I like to climb in the trees. There is a lot more to be seen from there, you know?” Before I could give him an answer, he began petting my two companions. They seemed to accept him, but didn’t enjoy it as much as they would when I would pet them. I was a bit relieved, knowing that they were only that way with me. 

We travelled the lands for over a year, meeting new creatures and people I knew from the centre of Templee. As I had expected, they had found things to stay for. I had found some things that were worth staying for too, but as I was still young, I decided I could always go back.   
The road home was long. I came across creatures that weren’t all that nice, at one point Charlie got bitten in his hind leg and that forced Sid to take the lead. It matured him a lot. We finally arrived at a portal, which had seemed inactive, but upon touch it had awakened, sending us back to the centre of Templee. My mother was over the moon when she saw me arrive home. She was even more thrilled to see the sword strapped to my middle.   
Along the road, I had chosen my destiny. 

***

I open my eyes to see Stephen sitting next to me. he had been absent most of the day, disappearing with Mario. I don’t blame the man, Mario was a lot closer to his age than we were. “Mario told me about Sid. I’m sorry,” he tells me. I shoot him a glare. “What, you’re sorry you forgot to tell me that I made my dogs into spirits a long time ago? You’re sorry that I didn’t regain my memories of them? Well, if it makes you feel any better, I remember now. And I want to know where they are now.” I am absolutely fuming. I left Sid and Charlie in the care of the spirits until I was back again and none of them even bothered to tell me where my dogs are. Stephen sighs and lays his hand on my shoulder but I shake it off. “No, don’t even try to do that right now,” I yell at him. “You should have TOLD me. You need to tell me! Where are they?” Stephen makes a helpless motion with his hands. “Christian, you know we couldn’t! we made an agreement!”   
“But I remembered,” I protest. Anger had taken over and I feel my swords flickering on my back. I fight the urge to actually grab them and point them at the magician. “I remember everything! You. Should. Have. Told. Me.” I grit out. Stephen growls. It’s a sign that he’s had enough of this. “You listen to me very carefully now, boy,” he sneers as he grabs my arms. “You chose this. You wanted to remember all on your own, and we all agreed on that. now that you remember, you need to think. Think about everything and calm down.” The big man growls into my ear and turning my arm a bit farther than it can be turned, making me whimper. “Okay, okay, please stop! I’m sorry! I just want them back!” I fall onto my knees, words just falling from my lips. The moment that I crack, Stephen lets go of my arm and hugs me to his chest, shushing me. “They will appear soon, my boy. Have faith,” he whispers as we rock back and forth. I let out a shaky breath, trying to calm down. All the anger had left my body the moment I admitted what was really bothering me and Stephen understood that. He always understand things. 

We walk towards my room, me leaning on Father Time heavily. Remembering things drains a lot of my energy, which seems weird to me, but Stephen had nodded understandably. Of course. Arriving in my room, we see Charlie passed out on my bed and Andrew and Caroline curled up together on my sofa. Caro smiles at me sleepily and I smile back. She looks tired, which means she has been practicing her magic. I take a big blanket from my closet and drape it over the sleeping pair, kissing the blonde on her forehead. “Sleep well,” I tell her, my voice a bit hoarse from the yelling I did earlier. I look over at Stephen, who makes himself comfortable on my reading chair. I hand him a blanket too, thanking him. When he asks me what for, I tell him “Everything.” And it’s okay. It’s all okay.   
I sit down on the side of my bed, looking at my friends. Why couldn’t we be older? Why did we have to die so young. Stephen is the oldest out of us and he’s stuck at thirty-six for the rest of his life. I will forever be twenty-three. Caro will never look a day older than twenty-one. Andrew is never going to turn twenty-six, nor would Charlie. Still thinking, I lay down on my bed and curl up into Charlies side. If he’s hogging my bed, I get to cuddle. Seems like a fair deal.


	12. Fireball

The following morning I wake up feeling way too hot. I’m surrounded by warmth on every side and there’s someone panting in my ear. Not someone. My eyes shoot open and I gasp when two pairs of eyes stare at me with a hopeful expression. “Sid! Charlie!” I whisper their names over and over again, not believing they’re actually there. I remember calling them out in my dreams, running over the hills of Templee’s biggest island. Emotions well up in me when my dogs jump up to me and I can’t do anything but just hug them and pet them. Charlie lays his big furry head in my lap and Sid keeps on licking my cheek. “I can’t believe you’re really here,” I tell the two. Charlie blinks up at me, as if saying that he can’t believe it. I bury my hand in his soft fur. I missed him. I missed the both of them. Sid turns to Charl- Lucian and starts licking my best friend’s face to wake him up like he always did when we we’re still living in the lair together.   
“Sid!” Lucian sits up and hugs the overenthusiastic husky. Sid goes around the room to wake everyone up and the morning is filled with happiness. Eventually we go downstairs and Caroline and I make chocolate chip pancakes. My dogs bring a lot of happiness around, especially because them being here means that I am becoming a spirit more and more. I feel a lot more like my old self, probably because Charlie and Sid are here, but also because we’re falling into our old habits again. I used to cook a lot with Caroline, because we liked to keep busy and sometimes it was just nice to mess with the flavours and see if our tastes changed when we grew older. They did. In a good way.   
“Hey Chris,” Andrew makes me look up from my stack of pancakes. “I was thinking- Don’t you dare say it, Luci – is your age any different now? I mean, you were kind of born again.” I turn to look at Stephen, with whom I had discussed this before. He clears his throat and starts explaining that my body was turned into that of a baby and my memories were taken, which means that my current age still stands. I have been twenty-three for thirteen thousand, three hundred and ninety-four years.   
“So when you think about it, even as a baby you were twenty-three,” snickers Andrew. I punch him. “That’s not nice to day to someone as old as me.”   
“I’m older,” my friend argues, and I nod. He is indeed older, by four months. Stephen snorts at our childish argument. We all know that he is almost four hundred years older than us.

After breakfast we all head to the forest to train some. Charlie and Sid keep close to me, which makes me feel safe and whole again. Since they are used to combat, they don’t get in the way. I raised them well. Since the brothers and I have been training together for a while now, we are back on our old skill level, but Caroline and Stephen seem a bit out of practice, which is odd. “Haven’t you guys been training?” I ask them. Instead of answering Stephen looks away and Caroline’s cheeks redden. “Caro, Stephen! What the hell have you been doing all this time?”   
“We’ve been seeking out the limits of our magic,” confesses my red-cheeked friend. Stephen nods, still not looking me in the eye. “And…?” I raise my eyebrows. They wouldn’t feel so guilty about not training if there hadn’t been something else. Caroline starts to shuffle with her feet and turns even more red and Stephen starts couching. They are so hiding something. “We have been- ah… seeking out our family tree.”   
I raise my eyebrows, that’s not that embarrassing, right? “So?”   
“So, we were doing our research and of course we started from me, because I used to have a kid when I was nineteen, and we found him and he married into the royal family – which is really cool. But yeah, he was put in the care of the Ladies of Templee. But, it turns out that he married the ninth daughter of the Queen. So, jump about eight generations later and that daughter marries a son of the Jacobs bloodline, so then we had like a whole family full of mixed bloodlines from the four of us,” she rambles on. Stephen puts a hand on her shoulder to calm her down, but she keeps on talking. “So, then we Went back to Stephens beginning and he descends from a cousin of the Queen, which is awesome! But his son and daughter all had these big families and those families had lots of kids and so on and on and then! Oh can I tell, I want to tell him!” she looks really excitedly at Stephen why smiles and shushes her. He understands that I’m starting to get a little confused. “What Caroline wants to tell you is that we found out that your father is a great-great-great grandson of mine, which means that we are too, related. We all share the same blood coming from the royal family.”   
I stand there, gaping at the two of them. “That’s… awesome?” Caroline nods enthusiastically and Stephen grins. “So we’re all kind of related?” when the others nod again I raise my eyebrows. “Do we need to change or name from the Spirits to the Family Bond?” That makes everyone laugh. We all resume training after that.

I spend the whole afternoon looking for a bow and arrows. Charlie is walking in front of me like he always did and Sid is just trailing around town, sometimes disappearing into some alley and coming back with a stick or a ball in his mouth. I can’t help but smile at my silly dog. I’m just glad to have them back.   
I throw a tennis ball that Sid had found somewhere in a backyard and stop walking for a moment when I see it burn. “Oh shit. Oh. YES.” I do a little happy dance in the middle of the street, happy that there aren’t many people out today. I stand there for a while, looking at my hands. They feel warm, like they did before. Before before. Smiling I continue for search for a good bow and quivers. There are a lot of stores around here selling them, but the humans never were good with quality weapons. 

Laying my head down in Lucian’s lap, I groan in annoyance. Noem Charlie vanaf het begin al Lucian of introduceer het eerder, dit brengt mensen in de war“Why are humans so stupid? You can’t just form a bow from wood and metal and put some weak thread on it. And then the arrows! They just put some weird metal with a sharp point, but like, how will they ever go through skin, flesh and organs?”  
My friend laughs, as he keeps making shadowy figures move around the room. “You’ve held this monologue before, Rye. The humans are not going to be better at in if they don’t have to use those weapons anymore. They have guns now.” Instead of continuing our conversation, I concentrate on the warmth in my hands that I felt earlier. Little balls of fire start dancing around my fingers and I start flicking them up in the air, juggling them around. Lucian starts chuckling and lets his fingers slide through my hair. “When did you start getting those powers back, then?” he asks. His voice is soft, almost a whisper. My eyes are still on the little balls of fire as I’m trying to turn them into ice. “Just this afternoon,” I tell the hazel-eyes boy. His fingers going through my hair makes me sleepy and soon I lose my concentration, letting the little balls fall. I hear them bouncing all through the room until they roll over the floor and just melt. A small smile forms on my face before I fall asleep.


	13. Jack

We start training with real swords (I use Charlie’s, because he decided he wants to practice with his scythe) after our week and a half at the river. The week and a half that were supposed to be a few days. We did some dangerous stuff, we tested my powers (non-existent powers), we tried to figure out how to unsheathe my swords. We also built a tree house so we can just camp up there instead of having to put our tents up all the time. And we’d be safe from the bears.   
But the swords. I woke up with them in my hands this morning, just like I did when I first got them, thousands of years ago. Putting them back was easy, I just brought them to my back as if sheathing them and- Wait a minute. I bring my hands to my back like I would when I had them on my back still and draw them out. My swords are there. In my hands. “That was ridiculously logic,” I whisper to myself. I put them back and make them appear for a few times, grinning. 

It doesn’t take long for the others to notice that I got my swords back. I still don’t fully understand how they work, but it feels so good to just train with them again. All though I’m still human, I have my memories back and I know how to handle my swords. If I were to get my hands on a bow and quiver, I’d probably be able to do that just as well as before.   
Stephen was all smiles when he looked at me unsheathing my swords, but Caroline jumped up and down from happiness. She had just flung herself at me, making us land on the floor with a loud bang. This time, people could hear it because they made themselves visible, since that’s a thing that spirits can do. We can make ourselves visible and invisible to humans and other magical beings whenever we want. The only ones always being able to see us were other spirits and people born into the magical barrier. Luckily, there aren’t many people like that. 

Since I spend a lot of time training in the woods or hanging out at Mario’s, Alfie didn’t get a chance to ambush me again. Nick is still gone and will be gone for a long time and Melinda left for university about a week ago. That left me and my adoptive mother alone in the house – not that I went there often. Since I don’t need a lot of sleep anymore, I don’t see a lot of use in going home to pretend to sleep. I think my adoptive mother assumes that I’m moving out, and honestly, as soon as I turn into a spirit completely, I will. I mean, me and the brother always used to have our own liar, but I’m not sure if it still exists. I haven’t been there for well over five hundred years now.   
Leaning back into the grass, I stare up into the dark. “Hey Drew, can you still make those stars?” I ask my best friend, who’s laying on my left side in the grass. He grins. “I can do way more than that now,” he tells me before letting his hand run over the ground, making an exact copy of what’s under us appear on the cloak of darkness his little brother created a few hours ago. I bump my shoulder into his. “It looks great! It’s better than looking at the stars,” I sneer the last word, it tastes bitter in my mouth. About two thousand years back we discovered that the stars were indeed the souls of dead people and creatures. Some souls go to the stars, while others feed the sun. It’s like the people always believed with their “gods”, only then with the stars. Because everyone believes in the sun and the stars. Because you can see those, every single day. The crude thing is that everyone who is of importance to the world became a star while all the others with no significant importance to the world feed the sun. That’s why the sun is so much bigger than everything else.   
Charlie, who’s laying on my other side, scoffs. “Fucking stars mean absolutely nothing. Like, who even decides-”  
He’s interrupted by two groans. “Charlie.” We have had this conversation so many times now and every single time we come to the same conclusion it isn’t fair and it never will be fair. The last thirteen thousand years have not been fair to us, why start now?   
I stare at the image of light in the air until Charlie throws a wave of black over it. He creates small animals and makes them run around, playing with each other and then Andre copies him. Black and white glowing animals chase each other, jumping and running, making me smile. They weren’t able to do it before. “This is great guys,” I tell them with a big grin on my face. I missed this. But how can you miss something that you didn’t know was there?   
Rolling my eyes I look at my hands. I used to be able to create small elemental balls and toss them around, but I think my human body isn’t capable of it. But then again, any normal human body isn’t able to transform tattoos into real swords. 

“Awe, look at that guys, the three musketeers are playing with stuffed animals,” a taunting voice sounds from the other side of the black barrier. My eyes widen. “Alfie!” I whisper shout. The brothers shoot up, ready to fight, and I too unsheathe my swords. Laughter fills the air as the barriers disappear. The four brothers Johnson stand there, smirking. They stand there, from oldest to youngest. Joel, Alfie, Calvin and Kevin. “What do you want now?” I ask through gritted teeth. Joel, the most serious one, points at me. “We want that.”   
I simply raise my eyebrows. “I’m not a thing you can have.”   
“Not you, your medallion!” Calvin sounds like he’s berating a child when he yells that, and that’s kind of weird seeing that he’s only nineteen. It makes Andrew laugh. Hard. “Why would you want his medallion? Do you even know what’s in it?”   
The four guys scoff, all at the same time. That’s kind of creepy. “Of course we do,” tells Kevin us. he is by far the youngest, but he makes up for it in size. At sixteen he is way taller than his three brothers and he seems to have a little more muscle going on as well. Other than that, they look a lot alike. Their blonde hair and baby blue eyes make them look like innocent little angels. They’re not. They’re far from it, actually. Alfie proved that by beating me up. Twice. Joel is known for his temper. He proved that in high school when he beat up – or tried to beat up – the counsellor because she was busy with another student. The youngest two have been kicked out of school because of their temper. The teachers probably didn’t want to deal with two more Johnson brothers. Hey, I don’t blame them. I shrug and look at the brothers. “I’m not giving it up.”   
“Then we’ll beat you up again,” Alfie threatens. His two younger brothers nod and take a hold of the guns on their belts. My eyes widen. They have guns! I could die for real if I get hit. Charlie seems to realize the same thing and glances at me nervously. Joel seems to give his brothers some sort of look and the boys nod. It seems like they have some psychic link. 

They all aim their guns at me and start to walk closer by. I take a step back so the brothers can cover me since they’re immortal. I tighten the grip on my swords and get ready to attack, but something in Joel’s eyes makes me think that they’re not going to attack. They’re waiting for something. They come closer, take the safety off of their guns. I swallow nervously. I used to do this kind of thing often, but between the twenty-five years that I died and became human, and the hundred war-less years before that, I don’t know what to expect anymore. I also don’t remember a time where our enemy had machineguns.   
Then I see the purple glow that flashes over their eyes. I’ve seen that glow before. “The barrier,” I mutter under my breath, making the brothers nod. They had seen it too. The four brothers were born into the barrier. That explains why they are able to see the spirits. That explains the psychic link. it makes them even more dangerous too. We don’t know what powers they have and how they work. We also don’t know what generation they are. They don’t seem immortal, which is a good sign. 

When they get close enough, I can clearly see how their psychic link works. It comes off of them in pulsating waves. I wonder how far they reach. I’ve seen a handful of people with psychic powers, even though it mostly gets passed on from a parent to one child, that’s how the barrier works. The powers that are forced upon the child born exactly into the barrier last for one generation. It could be that they are all born into the barrier. That would explain the strong link.   
While I hold a conversation with myself, the brothers have come scarily close. It makes their guns a tad less useful, but still, it’s nerve wrecking to have them this close. Only seven meters away from us they stop and stare at us. Their eyes start to glow purple. “We are The Jack,” they chant, “We are here to take the amulet. Give the artefact to us and none will be harmed. Be warned, for we are more powerful than any enemy you have ever seen.” And with that, they disappear into the woods, running inhumanly fast.   
“Well… I didn’t see that coming.” 

***

Discussing the matter with Stephen and Caroline made things even more confusing. The questions that we were asking called for even more questions. Why do they want my amulet? Do they know what’s in my amulet? How? How are all four of them born into the barrier? Was it planned by their parents? How did they get the guns? Why do they have guns when they know we’re spirits?   
Charlie – who has his head on my lap – opens his eyes and looks up at me. “Stop thinking so much, you’re getting tense. It’s not comfy like this.” I roll my eyes at my friend but try to relax again. “Sorry, I’ll be sure to not think.”   
“What is it you’re thinking about, Rye? They’re not stronger than us, especially the five of us,” Andrew brings up, his drowsy voice coming from my floor, where he is sprawled out all over the rug. Caroline is tracing lines on his back, making them glow a purplish blue. It’s funny how all my friends have glowing powers and then there’s me. I just fly and throw balls of elemental magic. If I ever get those powers back. “Thanks, brain, real helpful here,” I mutter to myself, my mood instantly getting worse. Stephen looks up at me from where he’s sitting in my reading chair. “What’s wrong, Chris?”   
“It’s just, what if I’ll never be the same as I was before? I mean, my swords are different, but other than that… Drago hasn’t moved and I can’t feel any magic. Not like before I became human,” I try to explain, and Father Time nods. He understands. Of course he understands, he had trouble with his magic when he came back from being a dwarf. “It takes time, Ryder. You know that. Right now you’re just being an impatient little shit because you want to be able to defend yourself against those brothers. And you’re afraid to die, which is stupid, because when you die, you just come back to life as a spirit again,” Caroline brings up, being as straightforward as she always is. I nod, a small smile playing around my lips. “You’re right,” I admit. Andrew scoffs. “She’s always right, you should know that by now.” 

Andrew and I had started doing research about The Jack, trying to figure out if there were things out of the ordinary. There wasn’t. At least, it doesn’t seem that way. They were all born sixteen to twenty-five years ago, all into the spirit barrier. There didn’t seem to be anything weird going on with their parents either. Neither was born into the barrier or seemed to know about Pitania, and yet they had planned the birth of the boys up to the exact moment. Stephen had gone back into time, to see if there was something suspicious, but everything seemed normal.   
Except for the fact that somehow four brothers were born into the spirit barrier. That meant that they not only had to be born at a certain time, but also at a certain place. One would say it was impossible to plan, but it is even more impossible to do it randomly four times in a row.   
“This is absolutely impossible,” groans Andrew, throwing the book he was reading back on the table. “Like, seriously? How will we ever find out more about this shit?”


	14. Hypnotise

We spend the most of the following days seeing how far my regained powers can reach. It takes a lot of my focus and energy, and by the end of day four I’m absolutely shattered. We have never had this problem, since the magic came natural to all of us, so none of us had expected this to happen.   
I sit in a tree with Caroline, half asleep, listening to her as she goes on and on about how her little baby boy had become a prince. She had given the boy away because she was supposed to go into battle soon. That wakes me up a little. I knew about the kid, but she never told me so much about it. “Car? You gave away you son?”   
My blonde friend looks at me puzzled. “Yeah, I was going into-” she blinks a few times, seemingly confused. “I was going into battle, so I- they…” She gasps in horror when the realisation hits, tears forming in her eyes. “They took him, Chris. They took my baby boy. I never even got to name him. I- I- How could I let them take him? Chris, how?” her eyes bore into mine as she breaks down in sobs, not understanding how this could have happened. I bring my hand to her face, wanting to brush the tears away as she cries…

***

Cries filled the air as the small baby was wrapped into green blanket. The blonde girl looked at him in wonder. “He’s beautiful,” she gushed. Her voice is still raspy from her screams, but she doesn’t care. She held out her arms. “Please let me hold him?” The woman handling the baby ignored her while another took a seat next to her. The baby keeps crying and the girls grey eyes grew big and wet. “Please,” she whimpered. She wanted to hold the baby she had been carrying all those months. The woman next to her took her hand and shushed her. “Caroline, darling,” she began, her voice had an alluring tone that made the girl want to listen. “Please listen to me very carefully. You are needed on the battlefield. You need to fight for our country. Do you understand me?”   
The blonde girl nods. “I need to be on the battlefield. My country needs me,” she repeats. The woman smiles and nods approvingly. “That’s a good girl. Now, you can’t take a baby out to the battlefield, can you? So we have to take the baby somewhere safe.” The woman waits until the girl nods understandingly before she continues. “The baby needs to be taken care of by capable women, so you need to give the baby to us, do you understand? You need to give the baby to the Ladies of Templee.” The soothing voice of the woman makes the blonde girl smile and nod again. “I understand, the baby needs to be safe. I will need to give the baby to the Ladies of Templee.”   
The woman smiled and stood up. Her work here was done. 

The girl was packing when her mother came home. “Caroline, what are you doing, sweetheart?” The blonde looked up and smiles. “I’m packing, mama. I got to go to the battle.”  
“But the baby?” the woman’s eyes grew big as saucers, she didn’t understand what was going on. This morning her daughter was highly pregnant, now she was packing to go to battle. Smiling the girl finished packing and then kissed her mother on the cheek. “I have given him a home with the Ladies of Templee, mama. That way he will be safe when I go to battle.”  
And with that, she left. 

***

We both pull away from each other when the memory finishes, out of breath and overwhelmed. I look at Caroline, slightly in shock, but more worried about my friend, who looks like she is about to pass out any moment now. “Caro?” I try to put my hand on her cheek again, but she flinches away, probably scared that I’ll bring up another memory. “Caroline, look at me please.”   
The blonde sitting across of me looks up with watery eyes. “I just gave him up,” her voice cracks as she burst out in tears again and this time I pull her in for a hug. Sobs rack through her body, tears soaking through my shirt, but I don’t care. My fingers trace patterns over her back and I shush little comforting words in her ear. 

We sit in the tree for a long time after Caroline stops crying. We don’t talk, we just sit there, looking at the sky, thinking. That’s also a thing we used to do a lot. Even when Caroline was still a human girl, we did it a lot. With my hand still running circles on her back, we doze off. I honestly don’t know how we didn’t fall out if that tree. 

We get woken up by Andrew shooting balls of lights up in the air, coating us with a silvery powder. Caroline groans and shoots a glare at our friend. “I don’t appreciate being woken up. I also don’t appreciate being covered in glitter. I suggest you run, Jacobs.” The blonde gives me a kiss on the cheek before jumping out if the tree and letting the wind catch her. I smile, watching my two friends chase each other, laughter ringing through the air. They would be such a good couple.

I stay in the tree for a while longer, thinking about what I had just seen. I never thought bad about the Queen and her Court, but now I feel an anger towards them. I knew that they weren’t perfect. No one is, even the Queen. I had seen that when her son died. But that the Ladies of Templee were capable of such horrors, no. it makes me wonder how many others shared the same fate.  
I grimace and jump out of the tree, whistling for my two companions to follow me. The two had been playing in the forest, chasing squirrels and rolling in the mud. I’m glad the mud doesn’t actually stick to their fur. The three of us walk back towards my home, where the others have gone too. At least, I assume as much. 

Andrew and Caroline are raiding the fridge and when I ask them where Lucian is, they tell me he’s on the roof. Of course he is. The guy never liked to be inside. I go on up, leading Charlie and Sid into my room before climbing up on the roof myself. Lucian is sitting on the edge of the roof, balancing his scythe in the tip of his fingers. “If that thing falls it may behead someone,” I comment, sitting down next to him. He looks at me with raised eyebrows. “They’re only humans, one more or less doesn’t really matter.”   
I elbow him in the side. Hard. Lucian shoots me a glare as he rubs his side. “Ouch! Why would you- Oh. Oh! Shit, I’m sorry.”   
“You better be,” I grumble, staring into the sky. Stars are starting to glow and I try to glare them away. “Fucking stars. I can’t believe how humans are so dense.” Lucian nods, understanding what I mean. In a second we are surrounded by blackness. The hazel-eyed boy next to me looks at me, deep in thought. “You are still a human,” he then says. I nod, he’s right. “Yeah, but I’m changing again. And I never really believed in the things that normal humans believe in. They don’t like that.”  
“What?”   
“When you aren’t the same as them,” I tell him bitterly. A dark look must have formed on my face, because my friend’s shoulders stiffen and his jaw sets. “What did they do?” growls Lucian, realizing what must have happened to me in the past. Shrugging I turn away, he can work it out himself, he’s a smart boy.   
“Did they bully you, Rye? Did they pull your hair and push you into walls?” the boy’s voice is soft and laced with a bit of hurt. Like them hurting me hurt his as well. Hell, it probably does. I clear my throat. “It’s not like back then, Luci. They didn’t leave my tied to a pole in the water or something. Just got beaten up a few times, you know?” I shrug before leaning against my friend, who warps his arm around me. “Yeah, I know,” he sighs. 

***

“So Stephen,” I begin, taking a seat on a big pillow on the ground. Father time sits in one of the big chairs that Nick placed in the library. “I think my powers may have gotten stronger.” Stephen’s eyebrows raise, but he doesn’t say anything, so I just start to explain what happened earlier this week – leaving out the details. Nodding he takes a sip of his coffee and places the book he was reading next to him. I think he has read through my whole library at least twice in the past two weeks.   
“It seems like you’re finally deserving of your title,” he just says, before taking another sip and picking up his book again. I groan and let myself fall back, my head hitting the ground with a thud. Whoops. About twelve and a half thousand years ago the Queen had named me the Ryder of dreams and nightmares, because of the ability I had to sense a person’s worst nightmares and greatest dreams. I hadn’t been able to really see those. Or see memories at all. “Can being a human have made me stronger?” I start thinking out loud. Maybe Stephen has some sort of answer. He always seems to know more than I do. “I mean, it changed the way my weapons appear, so being a human must have changed something. But, I’m me, right? I mean, I haven’t changed, right?”  
It’s silent for a long while, so eventually I look up, ready to scold Stephen for not answering me, but Stephen is already smirking at me. Probably because of my impatience. I shoot the man a glare, but remain silent. “I think that you have already figured it out, Christian. Being a human has changed your view on things because you lived a human life. After living as a spirit for thirteen thousand years, it is to be expected that one stops seeing the little things in life, so being a human has changed your perspective. The change in your perspective of things may have influenced your powers.” I sit up straight, thinking over what the older man just said. “But does that mean that when I stop seeing things like I do now, my powers will change again? Or will I lose these powers?”   
Stephen shakes his head, smiling softly. “I don’t think that’s how it works. Your powers have grown and you know what you can do now. So now that you know they’re here, you’re not going to just lose them.” With that, Stephen picks up his book again and starts ignoring me again. I open my mouth to thank him, but he shushes me. “Now, let me read.”


	15. Small

Growing up in Templee, I learned all about elves and dwarfs. We all did. In our classes, in tales our parents told us before going to sleep. We all knew they existed, yet no one had ever seen them. Except for the Queen and a few of the Ladies of Templee, but they had been there from the beginning. Father Time had seen and met some as well, he gave up two hundred years of his life just to live as a dwarf. 

I first met the elves when I passed the five thousand year mark, they had this whole ceremony where I was introduced to them. They gave me the choice to join them, live by their rules and be part of their armies, or to be a part of them while not living with them. In both ways, they would have my back as much as I would have theirs. Not that I had to give up my live for them, but I would help them out once every five hundred years or so. I chose the last part. I could have chosen to not be any part of their society, but that meant about the same as becoming their enemy.   
So at the ceremony, they gave me this tattoo, which gave me the ability to call on them. I think that it’s still on my left shoulder blade - it had to be left. I don’t remember getting the tattoo when I was a human. Am I a human still? Is my body? I don’t even want to find out, because what if I am? 

I haven’t had a lot of time to think this over by myself, always being surrounded by the other spirits or my human friends in the cafe. I like it, being surrounded by my friends so much, it reminds me that I don’t have to be alone, even if I will live forever. But sometimes I just need a moment to recharge.   
Being a human changed me, in some ways. I’m way more creative than I was as a spirit, maybe because the humans in this era encourage it more, maybe because- well, I was sort of a different person for twenty-three years. I’m also more athletic, which seems strange, seeing we practiced almost every day, but it was always just with our weapons. Humans did things with gymnastics, yoga, karate, all kinds of sports. I tried a lot of them, resulting in me knowing a lot about them. I wasn’t good at them before, but now that I have my control of elements back, I’m able to do a lot more.   
I grin, hop on the counter and grab my cup of hot chocolate. I had put on a mountain of whipped cream on it and laid a box of chocolate chip cookies next to them, so I grab one and scoop up a nice amount of the cream before stuffing the thing in my mouth. If only mother could see me now. She’d disapprove. I chuckle. But then she’d probably join me. If only she was a spirit too. It makes me sad, to think about my mother. Knowing I will never see her again. But she would tell me to smile. Tell me to do the best I can do. To enjoy life, how long or short it may be. 

Online, I had found a nice bow and arrow shop, so I had gotten a good bow from there. I could tell that it was made by dwarfs, the craftsmanship put in the wood, the symbols carved into it, they just about screamed it. The seller had made it into a nice story, something about how an old Native once every year would send him one bow, just one, to sell it, not wanting anything in return. If only he had hidden the stack of handmade dwarf bows behind the counter.   
It had taken me a few tries and some practice, but I managed to master it again. Seeing it lay on the table again, it feels like it was only yesterday that I came back from the Chase with the dwarfs, proving my worth to be a bearer of their bows. I had been just over seven-and-a-half thousand years old, when they approached me. Later on I learned that everyone that turns a certain age has the opportunity to meet the dwarfs and elves. There are few people who reach that age. There are even fewer who know of the existence of the hidden peoples. As spirits, we were all in luck to get the chance. We all carried the gifts. Their gifts. 

I’d like to say that I would find it ridiculous as a human, that elves and dwarfs exist, that probably isn’t true. I believed in every little fantasy that you could imagine, every story that was told. I think I knew. As a human, I knew. But before, it was just believe. Now, it’s knowing. Knowing that there is more. That there is power beyond what anyone will ever know.   
Most people declared me crazy, for believing in such things. It was nothing that science could prove, so they despised it. Some understood, they accepted me, but I was never one of them. 

“What’s got you so sad-looking?” Andrew appears in front of me, a silly grin on his face. I raise my eyebrow at him, I know that grin. He last wore that grin when he came back from tricking some lonely spirit a few hundred years back. “What have you been doing?” I ask the guy, ignoring his question. A mischievous look appears in his eyes and he smiles broadly. “What makes you think I have done something?”   
“Seriously?”   
“Okay, okay, I may or may not have something to do with Car’s new hair color,” my best friend admits. I stare at him with a blank look on my face, blinking a few times. I feel like my eyebrows are about to attach themselves to my hairline, so I quickly try to get a neutral expression on my face. “Drew, what did you do to her hair?”   
Andrew opens his mouth, but gets cut off by a loud “ANDREW” coming from the bathroom upstairs. “Eh, I gotta run, mate, I’ll see you,” he looks over his shoulder, where loud footsteps are to be heard. “Probably never. Bye!”   
Not long after that a furious looking Caroline appears in front of me, her long hair colored with bright purples and pinks. It doesn’t look all that bad, but I can understand that she’s angry with our friend. No, not just angry, she looks ready to kill him.   
“Where has the bastard gone?”   
“No idea,” I shrug. I mean, I know where he’s gone off to and if she thinks about is, she probably does too. But I’m not helping her. Or Andrew for that matters. As my lady friend heads for the door, still fuming, I call after her. “Don’t kill him, Caro, we still need him.”


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> These are two loose scenes where I got stuck through NaNoWriMo 2017 and started another story to make the word count.

A little over nine thousand years ago we made up a little game. It was a lot like football, but we used elemental balls instead. And multiple as well. it started fairly innocent, just chasing each other wile trying to hit each other with small balls of “magic”, which eventually did more harm than good. So instead we decided to get the balls from one point of the area to the other. We often did it while flying, since everyone except for Stephen has the ability to fly, using either their elements or – in Caroline’s case – by manipulating the wind. 

Just like all the other games we had made up over the years, it had taken a lot of time before we could play it without either hurting someone or destroying something. I remember a time where we were tossing around a ball of fire and we accidentally set a whole human town on fire. No one was hurt, but only because Stephen had stopped time and we had literally dragged everyone out. There was one man who hadn’t been frozen like the rest, and so we discovered the existence of humans born into the barrier.   
Five thousand and seventy-nine years ago, we stopped playing games because well, cleaning up after ourselves took more time than we actually played. 

\---------------------------------

 

“You know, Luci, I think- I-“ I choke on my words, tears running over my face. I violently wipe them away with the sleeve of my- Lucian’s hoodie. “I know you’ll find us again but I- I can't do this without you.” Sobbing I look away from the water, putting my hands on the grass, pulling out a lot of


End file.
